


By Winter’s Falling Light

by AstridContraMundum



Series: On A Night Like This [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: At small parties there isn't any privacy, Christmas Fluff, Christmas party at the Thursdays', Episode: s06e04 Degüello, Established Relationship, Fluff, Friendship, Multi, Peter Jakes Returns to Oxford, Post-Episode: s06e04 Degüello, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25735855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Endeavour Morse gets the chance to mend his burned bridges, as—in the weeks following the events at Wicklesham Quarry—the old Cowley firm reunites to celebrate the Christmas season together, with many reconciliations and reunions along the way.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse & Fred Thursday, Endeavour Morse & Peter Jakes, Fred Thursday/Win Thursday, Hope/Peter Jakes, Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse, Max DeBryn & Endeavour Morse
Series: On A Night Like This [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867657
Comments: 86
Kudos: 66





	1. Drive, part one

**Author's Note:**

> Well .... I wanted this sequel to be all fluff, but then I realized that, at the end of The Edge of the Summer, I left Morse and Thursday at the edge of Degüello—so even though Morse is happy now, Thursday is not... 
> 
> But then I thought, what better way to get the old Cowley lot together than to have them take that stand at the quarry?
> 
> So here goes the first chapter....  
> sorry... yikes!.... there's still a little residual angst...

Thursday sat wedged into the passenger seat of the compact black squad car, watching the line of trees stream by, as yellow as candlelight against the gray October skies.

Behind the wheel, in the seat beside him, Mr. Bright drove on, his knuckles white as he maneuvered around the turns and curves of the old gravel road that wound its way out before them—a road just as twisting and as bent as whatever path that Morse must have followed to have ended up out here, all the way out at Wicklesham Quarry.

That it should happen now, after all this time, was unthinkable. 

Morse had been a magnet for danger even as a copper.

But now, as a Greats don, what hope did he have, really, alone against whatever two-bit shitehawks were most assuredly waiting for him, out here in the middle of nowhere?

What had possessed Morse to tear off like that?

Without even waiting for him?

Thursday shifted in his seat, straightening his legs, trying to relieve some of the restlessness there, and found himself wondering idly if Bixby were the sort to keep a gun.

There was a time that Thursday had hoped that he wasn’t.

Now he hoped that he was.

And that Morse, for once in his life, had had the good enough sense to take it.

Mr. Bright pressed down on the gas, pulling the squad car around a particularly sharp bend of a road strewn with puddles that shone like mirrors, reflecting the frayed strands of sunlight gathered behind the low clouds above, and Thursday glanced over at the dash, watching the needle of the speedometer slide away from him.

He could almost hear it, Morse’s low and mournful voice.

_“You were too slow.”_

The damn thing of it was, Thursday wasn’t even sure how they had _gotten_ to this point. 

How had Morse, of all people—who now belonged before a blackboard at Lonsdale, standing in a room lined with books and infused with a gentle academic light—ended up at the center of a cabal of Masons and corrupt city officials, in the middle of a quarry, miles away from Oxford?

Or perhaps it was that Thursday _did_ know.

Perhaps he just didn’t want to look too closely.

Because it had all begun with him, hadn’t it?

With one simple statement followed by one simple question.

***

“Miss Paroo said you were one of the readers there, at closing,” Thursday had said.

“Yes,” Morse said. “I was there from about five o’clock until the warning bell.”

“Did you see anything unusual there last night?” Thursday asked.

They had sat on a garden swing overlooking Lake Silence, watching a red hydroplane bob disconsolately on the dark water, as they polished off the cheese and pickle sandwich that Win had tucked into his pocket that morning.

One of the last sandwiches, it transpired, that Win would ever make for him.

Although he didn’t know it, then.

It was in the days before Ronnie had slid that first envelope to him from across the pub table. In the days when the autumn sun had just begun to soften the world with its own particular slant of cascading golden light.

Morse had looked over the lake, narrowing his eyes, as if by doing so he might make out each needle of each fir tree across the broad and shimmering water, and Thursday balled up the scrap of wax paper in which Win had wrapped the sandwich, tucking it away in his pocket. 

“No. Not really,” Morse said, with a shrug of one bony shoulder, a gesture as familiar to Thursday as the turn of a leaf as it falls to the ground. 

“Mr. Page had a row with Dr. Nicholson, but that’s nothing new.”

“Oh?” Thursday asked. “How so?”

“Dr. Nicholson was always after him, for one book or another from the Phi Collection.”

“Phi Collection?” Thursday asked.

“Obscene and libelous works not available to general readers. A special request has to be made to the librarian for access.”

“So. High-brow smut, you mean?”

Morse twisted his mouth in amusement at the designation.

“More or less.” 

Then, his smile faded, and he tugged thoughtfully at his ear.

“You know. Now that I think about it. Professor Burroughs seemed to be in rather a brown study, too. Not like him, really. Or maybe…..”

“Maybe what?”

Morse gazed once more off towards the horizon, beyond the solitary hydroplane rocking gently on the current, a testament to the fading summer, and into the dark line of trees on the opposite shore.

“Oh, I dunno. He might have been simply overwhelmed. He did have quite a few papers. Stamps and things. I think he’s been assigned to look over the Teagarden bequest, actually.”

And, again, Morse shrugged.

“I’m just stumbling around.”

“Did you see anyone when you went out?” Thursday asked.

“No.”

Thursday sighed, shifting his weight on the swing. Because now came the difficult part. Because he had to ask ...

…. even if it _did_ resurrect the memory of another day, of a day years ago, at the end of another summer, when Jeanne Hearne had been found dead in the woods around Lake Silence, of a day when Morse had been brought into the interrogation room, a bruise across his forehead blossoming just at the point where his head might have hit a steering wheel.

_“Well, old man. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’d love nothing better than to wrap this up after the week you’ve had, but I’m afraid it’s not so simple. It’s all just been a ghastly mistake. I’m not sure if we’ve much else to say. We’ll wait for our brief to arrive if it’s all the same,” Bixby said._

_Thursday felt a new surge of irritation at that. What was this ‘we’ business? Was this the royal we, he was using? Or was Bixby somehow dragging Morse along with him into some sort of unified front?_

_He had certainly used the plural pronoun carefully enough in order to avoid specifying which one of them was driving. What did he hope to gain, by such subterfuge? It made no sense, from such a man. Why not pin it on Morse? It was clear as day and as the cut across his forehead that he had been the one behind the wheel._

_“So. How about you, Morse?” Thursday asked. “You’ve been fairly quiet.”_

_Bixby huffed a scornful laugh. “So that’s your tactic is it? Interrogate a man when he’s down? The man was nearly killed by a tiger this morning. Oh, good show, Inspector.”_

_But Morse lifted his gaze, looking steadily at him, as if Bixby had not spoken. His eyes were bleary and red-rimmed, and Thursday could tell at once he had been right; that he had recently come through a bout of weeping, even though it was certainly a little late for that now. Strange, still standing at the door, must have made the same assessment, because suddenly, he looked decidedly uncomfortable, and turned away._

_When Morse spoke, his voice was low, rusty from disuse._

_“It was a deer,” he said._

“Morse. I’m afraid I have to ask ….” Thursday began.

“Where I went after leaving the Bodleian?” Morse supplied. “If anyone can vouch for me?”

“Same as I’ll be asking both of the others.”

Morse nodded, showing that he understood.

“I went back to my rooms, to get a few things.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Yes. The porter. Mr. Hawkins. And I met a few other dons in the hall. Alexander Reece and Jerome Hogg. And then I drove home. I got here about eight, I suppose. We had guests that night, for drinks, actually.”

“And who was that?”

Morse made a bemused face. “Anthony Donn and Kay and Bruce Belborough.”

Thursday raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He wouldn’t have thought they’d be fast friends after that summer but …

Water under, he supposed.

Morse quirked another lopsided smile, as if he understood Thursday’s perplexity at the irony of it all, and, then, a new, soft light came into his eyes, as if a trace of nostalgia gleamed there.

Perhaps it was the slant of that falling sun that did it.

What is it about those first crisp days of autumn that make us long for things past, that stir up at once a new freshness and an old yearning?

“You know,” Morse said. “I have some books, I’ve been meaning to return. I could go with you, up to the Bodleian. Have a poke around.”

Thursday hesitated.

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had experts weigh in on a case before, but Morse had been one of the last to see Mr. Page alive, was a _part_ of the investigation.

Although, it was true, he had an alibi. Any number of people, it seemed, had seen him during the hours at which Dr. DeBryn had set the time of Osbert Page’s death.

“Specialist’s knowledge,” Thursday murmured.

“Wouldn’t hurt, surely,” Morse agreed.

And Thursday, too, was taken in by the idea of it.

When Morse had appeared at his side, out of nowhere, out of the darkness, at Blenheim Vale, all those years ago, Thursday had no way of knowing that that would mark the end of their last case together, that they were making their last stand.

To have just one more go, after all they had been through, to go out on a high note….

To have one last case between them, close the book properly this time…..

“Well,” Thursday said. “Seeing as how you’re going over there, anyway.”

Morse rose from the swing at once and began to gather his things up into his arms. As he sorted the books and papers into a tidy stack, one paper slipped away, began to turn and snap on the breeze, and Morse spun about and snatched it up—and, somewhere, no doubt, some hapless undergrad was breathing a sigh of relief.

As if to make up for it his inattentiveness, Morse smoothed the paper out with an especial care and laid it in a place of honor on top of his pile.

Morse could be sloppy, to be sure.

But he always careful with the important things.

They set off then, across lawns deep and green with summer’s fading ripeness, and made their way up to the great stone house—and, already, it just felt right.

Thursday had forgotten the perfect way in which Morse’s lanky stride matched his own surer, sturdier one, how they always kept pace together, step by step, presenting a united front as they walked up a flight of steps to the Ashmolean or along the pavement up to a flat in Jericho.

And now they’d be giving it one last go. 

Inside the house, Thursday followed Morse through a cool and darkened hall, sparely furnished save for a table holding a blue and white porcelain vase the size of Win’s hoover, filled with white roses and lilacs. Morse turned into a conservatory, and then led him on through a maze of rooms, until, at last, they reached a study with deep blue walls with two bright tall windows, the frames of which were painted gleaming white.

One of the walls was lined with bookshelves crammed with books and papers—it was a study, from the untidy look of things, that could only be Morse’s own.

Morse strode up to the large maple desk with an air of ownership that erased all doubt, and began at once to shuffle about the mess there, extricating stray books out from piles of papers that rustled like birds in a hedgerow.

And even then, Thursday was struck with it. 

Was there something else there, in Morse’s expression, beyond nostalgia, beyond a wish to be helpful?

Some drive to prove himself?

Because… if Morse needed to return these books so urgently, why the hell hadn’t he when he was there, at the Bodleian, just the night before?

Morse was still rummaging through his things, his brow furrowed into a scowl, when Bixby appeared in the doorway.

Thursday had just seen the man a half an hour or so before, when Bixby had answered the door to him, but he was still not used to seeing him in anything outside of an evening suit, let alone in such a get up—striped silk shirt, tucked into form-fitting black pants, set off with an enormously round silver belt buckle.

He was all flash compared to Morse, who was subdued and buttoned-up in contrast, in his burgundy jumper, crisp white shirt and matching tie.

Just went to show you how ill-suited they were, really.

Obvious reasons aside.

Bixby leaned casually against the doorframe, in the way in which a man in a cologne add might lean against an extravagant car, watching the scene with cool interest.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I’m just going over to the Bodleian. Have a look around,” Morse said.

There was a beat of a pause, and then Bixby laughed—that same rich and warm showman’s laugh that Thursday had heard ringing out above the murmur of the crowds at his parties, years ago, when he’d been sent out on one complaint or another.

“You’re joking,” he said.

Morse looked up, his face earnest, as clear as a bell, and Bixby’s smile faded, like the passing summer.

“You’re not a detective anymore,” Bixby said. “You do know that.”

Morse’s face took on that pinched look, then, that haughty expression he had always put on whenever he thought someone—be it Professor Copley-Barnes or Sergeant Jakes—was daring to challenge him.

“I have to return my books, anyway,” Morse said.

Bixby watched him for a moment as Morse continued to gather up a few loose volumes, stacking them with crisp authority.

“Ah,” he said, at last.

And then he looked away from Morse, so that his dark eyes swerved to meet his, holding his gaze as if he was taking care to mark just who he was holding accountable for this. As if he didn’t trust Thursday any further than he could throw him.

At the time, Thursday had found the whole little exchange annoying.

What? Was he Morse’s keeper?

Who was he to shadow his doorway, to demand to know where he was going? 

But later, much later, Thursday found himself having to concede it. 

Bixby had been right.

The man was not what he appeared to be, that much was certain.

But he was also perhaps the first one to see that Thursday wasn’t either. The first one to have had him pegged him right, all along. 

***

The car sped on, the tires crunching hard against the gravel, as yellow trees diffused with straying sunlight streamed by in a blur through the window. Up ahead, a single yellow leaf from an overarching branch fell fluttering towards the ground, landing on the windscreen for an instant before scuttling away, swept off in the wind.

It was just like the scrap of paper that had slipped quietly from Morse’s hand.

“It’s Hebrew,” Morse had said, dropping the paper into his outstretched palm.

“What’s it say?” Thursday asked.

Morse glanced up at him, bemused.

“I’m glad that you have so much faith in me, sir, but I can’t read _every_ language.”

“Oh,” Thursday grunted. “Right.”

Morse turned away and continued pacing about the large reading room of the Bodleian, looking into the other wastepaper baskets and flipping through books left on tables.

He came to a halt in the midst of a sea of readers’ tables, setting his hands on his hips, his eyes lingering over the towering white marble and lapis lazuli fireplace, the bright windows set with inserts of stained glass, even tracing the lines of the vaulted ceiling. Then his gaze fell back down to earth again, narrowing as he took in the rows of orderly tables, the rich wood surfaces gleaming in the clean light, as if he was recreating the scene in his mind.

“Miss Paroo rang the warning bell. And we all began to collect our things. I went down the main stair… And … and I could hear them, behind me. Burroughs and Jacobson. They went down the main stair, too.”

“Could someone have been hiding, maybe?” Thursday asked. “Plenty of places, amongst the stacks.”

“Possibly,” Morse replied. “Or perhaps….”

  
He pivoted at once, on the spot, and led him down through the main aisle, passing shelf after shelf lined with row after row of green and blue and red and brown Morocco leather-bound books, passing right over the spot where Osbert Page’s body had been found that morning, with a wood chisel driven deep in his back.

Just when Thursday thought they might proceed in such a way for all of eternity, Morse turned on the spot once more, and Thursday followed, all the way to the perimeter of the room, all the way to where a plain white door stood in the middle of the wall.

Morse pushed it open and went through, leaving Thursday to catch it as it swung shut behind him.

By the time Thursday had passed over the threshold, Morse was half-way down the back stairwell, clambering down a flight of steps where neither Thursday nor Strange had thought or known to look.

“Sir,” Morse called, casting his face up to him from a dozen steps below, triumph stamped across his every feature, glowing with that old pride.

“Muddy boot prints.”

And, by god, so there were.

***

On the drive back to Lake Silence, Thursday could hardly keep a quiet smile of satisfaction from off his face.

The world was just as it should be again; it was like old times, having Morse back, even though their places in the car had been reversed.

It felt so right that Thursday hated to have to drop him home again so soon.

After all, after that, what pretext would they have, what occasion, on which to meet? They were in two separate worlds now—weren’t they?—town and gown.

What else was there to do, once they reached the stone palace of a house out on Lake Silence but to exchange a handshake before that ostentatious fountain of leaping marble horses?

To exchange a handshake and say goodbye?

A good-bye that Thursday was not yet prepared for. Not when so much had still been left unsaid.

“How would you like to get a pint at the Lamb and Flag?” Thursday asked. “My treat.”

After all, he had never known Morse to turn down a free beer.

“All right, sir.”

Thursday’ worn face cracked into a broader smile, his spirits lightening, as a breeze full of the scent of the earth and fallen leaves breathed in through the open window.

There was no need, any longer, of course, for Morse to call him, _sir._

Perhaps Morse felt it, too, just how easy it was, how right, bringing back the old days again.

To the days when the old Cowley firm worked as one.

To the days before they killed George Fancy.

Thursday felt a lump in his throat form at the thought of the boy, grinning that grin as he flipped his fringe.

Odd, it was, to think that Morse had never known him.

***

Thursday took a seat across from Morse at the table in front of the big, front picture window—the same spot in which they had sat so many times before, in another life. Each scar on the old wood top, each deep stain left by a ring of condensation, was as familiar to him as the back of his gnarled hand.

Thursday leaned back in his chair, feeling both a warmth and an ache, warring within his chest.

It was the sun, that falling autumn light, that did it—that gave the place such a softness, that brought back the memories of things past, and he was getting old, as old as the falling year, had gone maudlin with it, with the sense of his own loss.

Because already he was reaching the beginning of the end of it all, wasn’t he? The end of his old life? The deed was done, the cheque he had written to Charlie was out there, floating around god-only-knew-where. 

He had signed away his own unravelling.

He knew, even then, that he was on the brink of the fall.

He just hadn’t known yet how far he’d go.

Little wonder that he had clung on, really. Looked to Morse to redeem him, to take him back to his old self, to being the man that he was, at least if only in his eyes.

Morse took a thoughtful draught of his beer, and in that action alone, Thursday was drawn back into the past—he had forgotten how Morse had always held his glass like that, with that sharp crook of his arm, so careful; he had forgotten the way he always lowered his head to meet the foam.

But when Morse drew back, tilting his head in the sunlight with that air of a connoisseur, considering the tones of his beer, Thursday realized that, as much as Morse looked just the same as ever, there were slight differences, too—new lines around the eyes, a new leanness to his face.

He wondered, idly, how Morse found him.

Older?

Grayer?

He certainly felt it.

“How is Mrs. Thursday?” Morse asked.

“Fine,” Thursday said, and then he swallowed hard.

The guilt was there, like a stone, even in the brief mention of her name. It wasn’t right that he should keep such a secret from her. But he had and he did, all the same.

“And Joan and Sam?”

“Sam’s in Ireland, with the Army. Joan’s still in Oxford. She’s working over in Social Welfare, now. Getting trained up by Viv Wall. Remember her?”

“Hmmmm,” Morse said, taking another sip of his beer.

And Thursday came to realize, amidst the small talk: if he didn’t say it now, he never would.

If he didn’t say it now, time would slip onward, on to the point where bringing up the past would be untenable.

Because, even now, it rankled, the memory of those phone records.

Thursday had sat behind his desk at the nick, tracing his finger down the column of phone numbers representing calls to his own house, stopping at that one incoming call from Lake Silence.

During which, Morse had taken all of two minutes and forty-six seconds to utterly alter the course of his life. 

To leave all of them behind.

Just one phone call, and Morse had gone running.

It didn’t sit right.

It had never sat right.

Morse might be prickly, difficult, and at times pretentious as hell, but the flip side to that was, he had always been his own man.

Morse was never anybody’s dog.

“You didn’t have to leave like that you know,” Thursday murmured, his voice low. “You could have stayed.”

Morse flinched. Then he cast his gaze down, keeping his eyes trained on his long and narrow hands as they cradled his beer.

It was clear as day that Morse knew just what morning he was talking about, without him needing to elaborate: The morning he had disappeared, almost as soon as Thursday had left the house to pick up Win and Joan from the train station.

“I would have helped you get back on your feet if you’d have let me,” Thursday said. “I would have hoped you would have known that.”

Thursday stopped, then, and waited, searching Morse’s face.

Morse had always been an intensely private person. There was a line there, and, in the long silence, Thursday came to feel as if he had come close to crossing it.

For a moment, Morse’s wide mobile mouth twitched, the familiar lines bracketing his face like parentheses wavering as he searched for his next words. 

“I know,” he said, at last.

“I mean, I _didn’t_ … then… but… later … ”

He shrugged.

“I know that now.”

Another silence fell between them, then, as they sat in the broad window, the sun shining on their backs with the last of the summer’s warmth.

And then they each picked up their beers.

Thursday longed to say more; it seemed the perfect time—sitting here in the sunbright window framed with the fading purple and white foxglove that billowed in the breeze outside—to shine more light on all that had passed between them.

It wasn’t enough, what Thursday had said, not by a long shot.

But it would have to be enough.

Because, it was clear, from the downturned quirk of Morse’s mouth, that that was all he was planning to say, or ever would say, about that summer, two years ago.

Perhaps he had been wrong to dredge up the ghosts of the past, the ghosts of Lake Silence.

Who was he to bring up past failings, after all?

Or perhaps, he thought, eyeing Morse more critically, he had been right.

Perhaps he had a _duty_ to ask more, to push that envelope, whether Morse wished it or no.

Because, as Morse sat looking over his glass and into the middle distance, it seemed as if there was a new question there, furrowing its way into Morse’s brow, as if something was troubling him. As if there was something more he wanted to ask him, or to tell him, but daren’t.

Well. Of course, there was. 

Thursday never could pin anything on Bixby, exactly. But he never trusted the man, either. He always seemed more of a production, than a person, more of a manner, than a man. Seemed charming enough on the surface, to be sure, but who knew what was going on with him, really, what strings he was pulling behind the scenes?

Just look at the way he had been so quick to appear in Morse’s doorway, back at Lake Silence. What was it to him if Morse helped him out on a case?

Morse was a don, now, wasn’t he? Had his own money? Was free to do what he liked?

Wasn’t he?

“Where’s ...” Morse began, and Thursday found himself leaning forward in his chair.

“Where’s Jakes?” Morse asked, cautiously. “I thought he might have been working with you, rather than Strange.”

In one swift wash of relief, Thursday felt the tension that had been steadily building up in his shoulders release.

So, that was it, then, the source of his worry.

And, of course. In their line, a sudden absence might mean far more than a mere transfer, more even, than a trip across the Pond.

“He went to America,” Thursday said.

Morse’s solemn face lit up in surprise.

“Sergeant Jakes? Really?”

“Yeah. Met a girl, who was studying at Oxford. Put his notice in and was gone within a month.”

“That all seems rather sudden.”

“Well,” Thursday shrugged. “I think it may have been a case of doing the right thing.”

“Jakes has a _child?”_ Morse asked, the surprise rising even higher in his voice.

“Yeah. Little girl. Sent a card to us all at Christmas, with a snap.”

“So, where is he, exactly?”

“Wyoming. The girl’s father has a ranch out there, evidently." 

Morse smiled so that his eyes crinkled, beaming in delight at this new and unexpected piece of information. And suddenly, Thursday recognized the new lines on Morse’s face for what they were—laugh lines, the damnedest thing.

Who would have thought it, of sour old Morse, who had always seemed so old before his time? 

And once again, Thursday was forced to reevaluate Morse’s situation, to fall back on the assessment he had made when he had first seen Morse walking down the hall of the house on Lake Silence, looking very much like a man at home.

Against all expectation, it seemed that Morse had grown into a man who was utterly at ease with himself. As if, even much to his own astonishment, he had found his place at last.

Morse was alright.

And perhaps that meant, by extension, that Bixby was, too. 

“Hmmmm,” Morse mused, brightly. “Cowboy Jakes.”

Thursday raised his glass in a mock-toast.

“Yee-haw,” he confirmed.

Morse snorted softly as he picked up his pint, as if laughing at some private joke.

“So, Jakes got married. And to an American of all things. What a coincidence. Funny how the world works, isn’t it?”

Then he took another draught of beer.

“How’s that?” Thursday asked.

Morse set his glass back smartly on the table.

“Nothing,” he said.

But that was Morse all over for you.

Inscrutable buggar.

They finished their drinks, and Thursday paid the tab, and that should have been that, as far as Morse’s involvement in the case was concerned.

Thursday should have left Morse to slip off into the safe shadow land of old acquaintances, where he belonged.

But it was just a few days after that drink that it all went to hell, that Thursday finally had to accept that Charlie wasn’t coming back, that he finally had to tell Win the truth of what he had done.

It was dizzying to realize just how fast, just how far he had fallen in her eyes. 

His marriage was over. It took him a few days to realize it. He had gotten so used to Win forgiving him—for being late, for not calling in, even for the hell he had put her through all those times when a funeral wreath had appeared on their front door back in the Smoke, and even once here, in Oxford. She had even forgiven him after all of their troubles with Joan, when she had been so angry with him, wanting him to do more, even though he felt it was beyond his power at the time.

But now, without realizing it, he had stumbled across Win’s line at last.

Bound to happen. The long hours, the silences, all the secrets the job demanded, far too many that should fall between a husband and wife.

But all that, even, they might have survived, had it not been for his stupidity. His betrayal.

It had gotten to where Win wouldn’t even look him in the eye anymore. Just went about her day as if he was not even there.

He had never known such an ache of loneliness—no, not even as he had sat under a desert sky, during the war—as he had in his exile in Sam’s old bedroom, with Win, in their bed, right down the hall.

He had to get the money back.

He _had_ to.

And then, there it was, like a sign from some power that Thursday never had really believed in, some glimmer of grace, in the form of Ronnie, slipping an envelope to him from across the pub table.

Thursday snatched it up, wary of any sets of knowing eyes that might be upon them, and tucked the envelope into his pocket—the same pocket into which he had tucked the balled-up piece of wax paper from the sandwich he and Morse had shared, on the swing overlooking Lake Silence, just a week before.

That envelope was his salvation, his second chance. _I got it back_ , he would tell her. _See? No harm done._

He’d buy Win that new oven she’d been wanting. A new frock or two. They might even take a holiday together, out to Blackpool, get to know one another all over again, now that the kids were gone.

They’d have a fresh start, heading off together into their waning years, into the golden autumn of their lives— and his soul lightened with thoughts of he and Win, walking hand and hand along the shore, seabirds circling above.

Even as it plummeted, like a crash of a wave, deep within his heavy heart.

Little wonder he should find himself striding along the halls of Lonsdale, heading for those rooms at the end of the hall, the ones that seemed to radiate with that clear and pristine light.

He had a question about the map he and Strange had found in Page’s flat, to be sure, but who was he fooling, really?

This was Oxford. Couldn’t turn around in a town like this without bumping into _someone_ or another who could tell him the meaning of a single Greek word, inscribed on the bottom of a piece of paper.

Later he realized, even if he _hadn’t_ found the map in Osbert Page’s flat, he would have found some excuse to talk to Morse, some pretext or another.

Some other reason to speak to the one copper he had ever known who was utterly incorruptible, even from the very first.

And there it was, a memory of a cold winter morning, bright with snow, when he and Morse had walked away from a newsstand along the Broad.

_“Good man, Albert. Reliable.”_

_“At ten bob a time, I expect he is,” Morse said._

_“_ _Any copper’s only as good as the intelligence he gets. What do they teach you these days?” Thursday asked._

_“I don’t remember anything in the Judges’ Rules about paying for information.”_  
  
_“Well. Got something new to think about, then, haven’t you?”_

Morse had widened his eyes in disbelief, shaking his head.

Not that any of Morse’s grand repertoire of disapproving faces had ever stopped him, really, but they did make him think.

How far was too far?

It was Morse who had been his better angel, all along.

In his rooms at Lonsdale, Morse was in his element; Thursday was beginning to see that more and more now. Down at the nick, he had always seemed as if he hadn’t enough space, holed up in his corner with his shoulders hunched, crammed behind that monstrosity of a typewriter. Morse always had been a fidgety sort, forever clicking a pen, or tugging on his ear, or ruffling up the waves at his nape, his head bent over a spread of files all lying on top of one another on his tiny desk, so that he was left to incessantly flip through them, one by one by one.

But here, in his own rooms at Lonsdale, Morse had plenty of space in which to pace about—and to spread his things—which, from the looks of the place—he did, in all of their glory.

“It’s Greek, isn’t it?” Thursday asked, handing him over the map.

“Hmmm. _Anemoi._ Wind gods.”

Morse turned his head, carried the map over to the window, so that he could hold it up in the light.

“There’s something here at the bottom,” he said. _“HB?”_

“Yeah,” Thursday said. “Any idea what that might mean?”

Morse twisted his mouth, mulling it over.

And then he shrugged.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

He began to hand the map back, but then he paused, mid-motion.

“May I ... may I keep this for a day or so? Maybe I can sort something out.”

Thursday hesitated; technically, he should not be leaving a piece of evidence with someone with whom he was merely seeking a consult.

But this was Morse.

Day or two couldn’t hurt.

Thursday would have the chance to come back, then.

And he would not be so alone.

And, who knew? Morse might just figure it out, find some meaning behind those two letters.

“Alright,” Thursday said. 

Thursday had assumed that Morse would go home, put his best record on loud as it would play, and come up with a list of esoteric possibilities.

He hadn’t thought that he would take it as a leaping-off point into his own investigation.

But he should have known, shouldn’t he? He should have _known_ how quick Morse had always been, getting ahead of himself, flying off into harm’s way.

And they had had one Icarus, already, flying to close to the sun.

****

Outside of the windows of the black squad car, the sun broke free, falling upon the passing yellow trees, turning them to gold, as the squad car tore on towards Wicklesham Quarry.

_How lovely, how bright,_ Morse might have said.

Thursday balled up his hand, lying loosely in his lap, into a tight fist.

If he didn’t know it on that day, the day he had allowed Morse to keep that map, he should have known it—known to sense the coming danger—on that terrible day he had found Morse out at Crammer House.

And, suddenly, the trees, straight and tall, evaporated before his weary eyes.

Instead, his thoughts turned inwards, the trees replaced by a crumbling concrete tower.


	2. Drive, part two

_And, suddenly, the yellow trees, straight and tall, evaporated before his weary eyes._

_Instead, his thoughts turned inwards, the trees replaced by a crumbling concrete tower......._

Thursday had slammed the door of the black squad car shut and stepped out into a war zone.

All around him, sirens wailed, dimming his hearing to all else, as police cars and fire engines and ambulances pulled up, parking haphazardly in a torrent of revolving blue and red lights, uniformed officers and medics bursting from their doors.

Before him, Cranmer House stood, a solid rectangle against the softening blue horizon—modern and strong and emphatic—save for the top corner, which had crumbled away into an avalanche of concrete and iron, leaving rubble and debris piled on what had once been a tidy green bordered in small, perfectly-manicured shrubs.

It was like a Goliath, Cranmer House was—its body standing tall and proud—too proud—with its head lying bleeding at its feet.

Thursday had never seen the like of it—not in the Smoke and not in the war. He could barely register the horror of it, the horror that the residents of those top flats must have experienced not moments before. The building had shuddered and roared, and then the very ceiling had fallen down upon them, and the floor had collapsed out from under their feet, catching them up in a whirlwind of tortuous bent metal and chunks of concrete, that gouged and ripped and crushed, until they were buried in it.

There was no possible way anyone in those missing flats—anyone who had once dwelt in that corner where only the sky now stood— could have survived it.

Beside him, Ronnie, always so cocksure, seemed to pale, all the smugness in his voice gone, vanished, so that he sounded almost like a little boy.

“What do we do? Where do we start?” he asked.

“What happened?” Jago added.

But Mr. Bright was already striding forward, through the clouds of dust that were just beginning to settle, giving the scene an eerie and dreamlike quality, as though it were all perhaps a nightmare from which they would soon wake.

“What happened is immaterial at the moment,” he replied. “All the matters now is the preservation of life.”

Ronnie and Jago followed after, but he, Thursday, was useless, he was impotent, because while Mr. Bright—as compact as a coiled spring in his orderly blue uniform—was surging forwards, thinking of solutions, Thursday was hanging back, brooding over the cause.

Somewhere, someone had cut a corner.

Somewhere, someone was on the take.

Just like he was.

Baksheesh, for a blind eye turned, Jago had said.

And someone had turned a blind eye here, all right.

Thursday realized then, with a sickening twist in his gut, that he was not simply a witness to the tragedy.

He was complicit in it.

Whatever people had died here today, he had played his part in their deaths. Wasn’t he, after all, part of the system that let these sorts of “accidents” happen?

Oh, it would be covered up, blamed, no doubt, on a gas leak, that old standby, but Thursday would know better.

He had crossed the line that Morse had so often warned him against, fallen far past all redemption.

But wallowing in his own guilt, raking himself over the coals until he began to feel the pleasure of it, was nothing more than taking the knife to these poor souls twice over.

The least he could do was to set his old body in motion, be of some use.

He set off, heading towards a pile of debris that stood as high as he was tall.

And how apropos, since he had had the making of it.

But enough of that old bile.

He scanned the wreckage from left to right, assessing where to begin, and then, he spotted him—a man in a suit that had once been dark blue, but was now thickly coated with dust, as was his face and hair, so that he looked like the Gollum left in Dr. Nicholson’s cubby, like a man made of clay.

He was holding the limp body of a little girl in a yellow dress in his arms, staring up at the building in disbelief, and then he turned in a circle, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do, so that Thursday wondered if he, too, had been hit with some of the falling debris—he seemed to be shell-shocked, almost, unsteady on his feet. 

Thursday strode over to the man at once, stopping to breathe only when he had the chance to look over the little girl, who was lying in his arms, apparently unharmed. Her hair had been tied up in pigtails with polka-dot ribbons that were still yellow and bright despite the dust in the air, and her eyes were softly closed, as if she might have been merely sleeping.

“She just came running out,” the man cried, his voice cracking, rising an octave or so above what must have been its natural timber. “Right as it all started falling. I don’t know where her mother is.”

It was as much the import of his words—the fact that the first question to come to his mind was to worry over girl’s mother—as it was his eyes— overlarge and bright blue in a mask of gray dust—that led Thursday to recognize the man at once.

Morse.

What the hell was he doing over here, in this part of town?

“Take her over to the ambulances,” Thursday barked. “And get yourself looked over as well.”

Morse nodded and pivoted on the spot, as if relieved to be given some clear instruction, and then he staggered off, picking his way through fallen chunks of concrete, careful not to jostle the child.

As Thursday watched his progress, making sure he was heading steadily in the right direction, he noticed that one of the little girl’s ribbons had come loose.

Thursday wasn’t sure why, in all of the chaos and confusion of the hellish scene around him, but it was that detail that stayed with him throughout that long day—that ribbon, drifting loose and lost on the wind, which had been tied, no doubt, just that morning by the young woman who Morse had been looking for—by little girl’s mother—with so much tenderness and love.

Thursday felt tired, then, tired and weary. He had become an old man, it seemed, without realizing it. Far past his time to have been put out to pasture.

***

The sun beat down, and he worked on, doing his best to shift away some of the rubble, both hoping to find and fearing to find a body underneath. No one spoke. For what was there to say? It was the only way they had to pay their respects, keeping this silence over what surely would prove to be a mass grave.

And then, in his peripheral vision, there he was, the movements of a man he knew better than himself. A man more complicated than he was, but far simpler, too.

Morse.

Morse had stayed to help. Of course, he had stayed. This was Morse, after all.

“Gently,” Dr. DeBryn, urged him. “I don’t want any more injuries.”

And Morse nodded. If they had been surprised to meet one another again, after all these years, they gave no indication, such was the direness of the situation.

Then, the thought came to Thursday once more: What had Morse been doing here? Had he run right the hell into the place, even as it had been crumbling around him? From the look of his suit, of his hair, it looked as if but for the grace of a moment, he might well have been buried beneath the very wreckage through which he now navigated, looking for those who had been less fortunate than he.

What a kick in the teeth it would have been. What a kick in the gut, if he, Thursday, had found Morse, here, beneath this fallen tower, instead of circling about out front. If it had been he, Thursday, in his own crooked and roundabout way, who had played a part in Morse’s death.

If the very thing that Morse had chastised Thursday against, again and again, had been the very thing to bring about his own death, in the end.

Thursday had warned Morse against Vic Kasper.

He had warned him against that lot at Lake Silence.

When all along, the one he should have been warning Morse against was himself.

Anger burbled its way to the surface then, that old anger that had been roiling quietly for months now, ever since the death of George Fancy, just under his skin, as if his skin was too tight, too taut, to keep it contained.

_“Morse!”_ Thursday called, with that same brisk authority with which he had once called him into his office— just as if he still had a right to, he was that much without shame.

Morse paused in his work, wiping the dust and sweat from off his brow with the back of the sleeve of his fine new suit— the sort of suit that Thursday was still not used to seeing him in—and looked up at him.

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

Morse blinked, the big eyes like distant blue worlds in their mask of dust, confused, as if he could not dream of why that might matter now.

“I was just happening by.”

And the _hell_ he was. He was having a poke around, wasn’t he?

It had always seemed that Morse’s actions were quixotic, the result of a random relay of synapses, but, if you stepped back far enough, there was always some reason for Morse’s eccentricities, some design, some method behind the madness— there always was.

“A bit far from Lonsdale, aren’t you?” Thursday snapped.

Morse’s expression, in the meanwhile, already dulled by its caking of dust, was falling further and further in retreat.

“I was at a pub, having lunch with someone, and then I just popped in to Woolworths’ to buy a package of pens.”

Thursday felt the blood hammering in his ears at the audacity of it. That was it. That was _it_. The ridiculousness of the lie pushed Thursday past all patience, past all endurance.

_“Woolworths’_?” Thursday roared. “Why do you want with a pen from Woolworth’s for? Can’t Bixby buy you a Montblanc? You would think he could buy you a whole damn lorry-load of them!” 

For a moment Morse looked merely shocked, as if he had been struck; then, he glared at him, affronted, a surge of pain and anger in his face, the likes of which Thursday hadn’t seen since that lost summer, years ago.

He pulled himself up to his full height, then, sure of his dignity, for all that he looked a mess.

“It’s not me, who’s been bought,” he said, loftily.

“What’s that supposed to mean, then?”

But Morse only turned his back on him and went about his work.

Leaving Thursday reeling, with a cold chill coursing through his veins, as if all the blood had drained out if him. 

Did Morse know?

Or did he only suspect?

Was he speaking from knowledge or only from a desire to wound, where he himself had been wounded?

Who had he been talking to?

And even worse, how could he, Thursday, find the strength to worry about that now—his standing in Morse’s eyes, his own hide—even while standing here, at the center of so much suffering and loss and heartbreak and pointless, pointless death? 

He felt the bile rise to the back of his throat, filled with an utter disgust with himself. Morse had turned away, but he still felt it, as if he was under scrutiny, as if he had fallen under the eyes of judgment.

And then he glanced up to see Strange, his face solemn—a man now, not the friendly boy who had once wandered into Cowley fresh and new in his custodian’s helmet—watching the scene.

Strange had been there, at the Bodleian, when Miss Paroo, the junior librarian, had mentioned that a Professor Morse was teaching at Lonsdale, had been there with him at the bursar’s office, when he had found out that this Professor Morse was indeed _their_ Morse, a professor E. Morse, with an address out at Lake Silence.

Had Thursday, perhaps, not been the only old Cowley acquaintance with whom Morse had rekindled his old ties?

Who had Morse been having lunch with, out here, so far from his ivied walls at the colleges, so far from his posh digs at Lake Silence?

Thursday looked over to where Morse was picking through the rubble, to try once more to read the expression on his face, but just then, a dull moan broke out from amidst the debris, and Morse’s eyes went wide as he moved into action, his fight with Thursday forgotten as he scrambled over the wreckage and bracketed his narrow hands around a jagged chunk of concrete run through with broken iron.

Thursday stood for a moment, and watched, his legs heavy, as if anchored to the spot, before he managed, at last, to move, to rouse himself, to come to his former bagman's aid.

.

***

Hour after hour Thursday worked. When the new shift reported in, Thursday stayed on—it was the very least he could do, in atonement for his sins. All around him, the bodies were carried out, covered in white sheets stained red with blood, and his heart went out in sympathy, to the victims, to their families, all the way to Dr. Bryn, who would have more work before him this night than he had seen in the year.

And it was true; he was sick, he was lost, he was outside of all deliverance.

Because even now, amidst the silence of broken corpses under broken concrete, and above the distant wail of heartbroken cries, his ears were filled with music. Even in the midst of this hell, all he could think of was the night he had looked through the window of the ballroom door, watching Win dancing in the arms of another man. 

Once this is done, I’ll go home, he thought.

And I’ll tell Win I love her.

But he hadn’t, had he?

Because he couldn’t even look her in the eye, what with that envelope in his pocket.

Not remembering that look that Strange had had on his face……

.... And even now, Strange was quiet, shifting his weight impatiently in the back seat of the squad car, flexing his hands so that his knuckles cracked.

Strange, who Thursday knew kept a picture of George Fancy in his living room, along with his own evidence board. 

Strange, who had tried, in his own way, to warn him against just this, this disaster that had them hurtling along to the quarry. 

Two days after the tragedy at Cranmer House, he and Strange found themselves once more at Professor Burroughs’ tidy little cottage, half-covered in climbing red roses.

They went up the steps and rang the bell, and it wasn’t long before the old man opened the door for them, allowing them inside. The rooms were just the same as Thursday had remembered from a week or so ago—the prints and the maps and the mounted display cases of insects and sea stars, all hung against a green and lavender wallpaper that teemed with butterflies and twisting vines. Papers and books and pieces of rose quartz and lacquered boxes spilled out over every table, amidst jungles of potted ferns.

Thursday looked at it all with joyless eyes.

This is what you would have been filling your life up with, he thought, if you hadn’t had Win. 

The old man sat on the edge of the couch, hunched over so that his hands rested on his thighs, eager for company, it seemed. His red bow tie was done up perfectly, but his suit was crumpled, his shirt unironed; he was a consummate confirmed bachelor. 

“I wanted to ask you about the Gower Peninsula,” Thursday said.

“Ah. Popular topic these days, it would seem.”

The words gave Thursday pause.

“How is that?” Thursday asked.

“A don, up at Lonsdale, was asking me about it just yesterday afternoon. Lovely walking, if you’re ever out that way.”

Thursday felt his heart sink while Strange looked to him sharply, a glare of reprimand on his stern face.

“What don was this?” Strange asked.

As if the question needed asking.

“Professor Morse,” Burroughs said. “He had all sorts of questions. Sort of surprising, as he’s a Greats man. But…” he concluded, raising his eyebrows and letting the words fall away, as if there was no accounting for Morse or for any of his many eccentricities.

“What was he asking about?” Strange asked. “Morse?”

“Farringdon sponge gravel,” the old man pronounced, rather grandly. “It’s part of the Greensand. Formed in the Cretaceous. He wanted to know if it was found anywhere other than Wicklesham.”

“Was he?” Thursday asked.

The rest was like a fog in his brain.

Thursday had thought he was getting somewhere.

But Morse, it seemed, was already there. 

And had left him far, far behind. 

It was all as good as a benediction. 

**** 

That afternoon, Thursday walked into the pub where Ronnie sat waiting in a corner and pulled the envelope from his pocket.

“It’s all there. Every penny,” he said.

Ronnie looked up at him, his face a blank, his heavy forearms resting on the table before him.

“I don’t get it,” he said. 

“What's to get?” Thursday replied. “I had a mad half hour. It’s over.”

Ronnie sighed and ran a tired hand over his face. Despite the fashionable dark sideburns and the tight, open-collared shirt, designed to show off his prowess, he suddenly seemed to be twenty years his senior, instead of the other way 'round.

“Have a drink. You’re not thinking straight.”

“I’m thinking straight for the first time in a long while. Maybe for the first time since George Fancy.”

“Fancy has nothing to do with this.”

“He has everything to do with this. He stood for something. If I take this, I might as well piss on his grave.” 

“It doesn’t go that way,” Ronnie said. 

“It goes how I say it goes,” Thursday said. “It’s _bent.”_

“The world’s bent,” Ronnie said, a weariness in his voice that Thursday had not heard there before. 

More to the point, Thursday knew it wasn’t true.

There was someone else out there, working out the same puzzle he had been.

Someone utterly incorruptible.

Someone who once had thought the world of him, even though he had scarcely ever deserved it.

He walked out of the pub doors, feeling lighter than he had in weeks, but heavier, too.

He knew that he had not heard the last of it.

But he needed to catch up to Morse, and he knew he couldn’t face him again with the weight of that envelope dragging him down. Knew he couldn’t face the last person on this earth before whom he might still forge some sort of redemption.

Win, after all, knew just what he was.

***

By the time he reached Morse’s rooms at Lonsdale, however, he found they were empty, the green reading lamp on the desk snapped off for the night.

Thursday snapped it on again and shuffled a bit through Morse’s things, but all he found were ungraded essays and library books and lecture notes.

No sign of the map that he had left with him, the one with the Greek word for the wind gods and the letters _HB._

No sign at all of anything to show he’d been digging around further into the case, putting his beak in where it wasn’t wanted.

All was in order.

Well, for Morse anyway.

Well, good enough, then.

Perhaps his fears had been unfounded.

Morse must already be back at home by now, listening to records, far across the manicured lawns and cloistered behind the stone walls of the house on Lake Silence, where nothing really could touch him. 

Thursday walked down the dim and silent halls of the old college, then, back out into the falling night, and drove home, off to follow his own advice, the advice he had given to Morse so long ago.

Once he was home, he fixed himself a Scotch. 

And then he put a record on, as loud as it would play.

To see if there was anything left there, that his own darkness hadn’t taken away from him. 

***

He sat in his chair, looking out over a room full a memories: the empty couch where they had all once sat, crammed in together, watching the telly and passing around a box of Cresswell’s chocolates. The calico china cat on the mantle, the one that Joan had saved her pennies to buy for Win one year at Christmas, her first ever store-bought gift. The lace curtains in the windows that had been their first purchase when they had moved into the place, scarcely able to believe their good luck, on that day full of hope, long ago. The mirror over the fireplace that had reflected so many times of sorrow and of joy in a house that Win said she no longer wanted. 

Outside, the sun sank, and the room fell further and further into shadow. How apropos, really. Soon the light would fade, altogether, leaving the yellow artificial glow of the lamp on the table beside him the only light, the spotlight in which to take his final leave, his final bow, as the curtain fell. 

Suddenly, there were small sounds, emanating from the kitchen: Win, making her solitary cup of tea. She had been out, as was her wont these days. Out with her solicitor.

His replacement.

He had always thought of himself as her rock, her knight, her protector against the outside world: their home, her refuge, the hall stand, his shield.

But it turned out it had been he who needed her all along. Not the other way ’round.

He took a sip of his Scotch, felt with with masochistic satisfaction the burn in his throat.

And then, there she was, standing in the doorway, her face radiant, as beautiful and as fine as ever, even cast in the lamp’s unforgiving light. 

“Well. I’m off to bed,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Thursday said.

She paused, and Thursday saw anew the deep sadness there, in her face, felt anew the ramifications of it. 

Suddenly, he knew, with dreadful certainty.

Even when he had thought it had been too late, it hadn’t been too late.

He might have won her back, once.

If he’d had the guts.

“I made a mess of things,” he said. “I love you.”

“Sorry’s all I wanted,” she said.

“I know. But I’ve loved you too long to stop loving you now.”

He sighed, sank deeper into his chair, sagging into it, like the hollow old man he was.

“Should have told you sooner,” he murmured. 

She gave him a small, tight smile, a smile on the brink of tears, as if she agreed.

Too late now.

And then she turned, her shadow passing away from the doorway, and, in that turning away, he felt it, their final goodbye.

And still, the lovelorn ballad on the turntable played on in a tremble of a poignant guitar notes, hollow and distant and bittersweet, the music utterly unaware of the depths of what had just transpired.

_In the West, the sun is sinking_

_Purple shadows on the sage_

_Time has come to face the music_

_and so we reach the final page_.

It was the sort of record that Morse would have hated. But he could hear Morse’s voice, just there, under the words, all the same. 

_How hopeless, underground falls the remorseful day._

“Better late than never,” he said out loud, to no one, as the room fell steadily into darkness.

Still, he sat, as if his heart was turning to stone—sat as the record spun on and on, even as the world spun on without him, a world whose very axis he might have changed once, if only he had he done things differently.

_Tears are for tomorrow_

_Now is for goodbye_

_Come the dawn, I must be going._

_But for now, dear, please dear, don’t cry._

It was all water under.

His whole life was water under.

_Vaya con dios, Felina._

_Farewell, my sweet cactus rose._

He barely heard it, between the music and the swirl of his own dark thoughts—the incongruous and mechanical and insistent ring of the telephone.

Well. Let the damn thing ring.

He hadn’t the strength to answer

But yet, it rang on and on, until something inside him stirred, something of that old strength, and, somehow, he managed to bring himself to his feet.

“Thursday,” he said, the yellow receiver heavy in his hand.

“I just got a call. From Dr. DeBryn,” Strange said.

Time seemed to unfold on a new plane, then.

The record played on, but Thursday did not hear it.

He called Mr. Bright, as Strange had requested.

And then he dialed another number, hoping that someone would answer. 

“Oxford 734,” a man said, with an airy, professional voice. Some sort of butler, perhaps.

“I’d like to speak to Professor Morse, please.”

A silence fell then, a deliberating one, leading Thursday to wonder just how large a circle of people it was who knew that Morse actually lived there.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said at last. “Professor Morse is still up at the colleges.”

But he wasn’t there. Thursday had been there hours ago.

“I’d like to speak with Bixby, then.”

“Mr. Bixby is in London, on business.”

And that sealed it then…. 

He remembered that first day he had gone back out to Lake Silence … remembered Bixby standing in the door of Morse’s study. 

_“You know you’re not a detective anymore.”_

Thursday realized then, that, all along, behind the scenes, he had perhaps been in engaged in some sort of game, a sort of a deadly tug-of-war, with a man he barely knew.

It had been Bixby, perhaps, keeping Morse in check, while Thursday had been encouraging him down this road all along, what with his jaunts to the library and questions about maps.

A road that led all the way to the quarry.

A road bound to lead a Classics don into the middle of god-only-knew what.

Better late than never, he had told Win.

If only he could unsay those words.

****

The car sped along a final turn and came out to where a tower of steel beams rose up into the brightening gray skies.

In front of it, a sky-blue Jaguar was parked amidst the gravel and the puddles that shone like mirrors. Mr. Bright pulled up beside it, and the three of them, he and Strange and Mr. Bright, in one movement, got out of the car.

And there he was. Morse. Not at all the young man he remembered, boyish and sloppy and tousle-haired in that ill-fitting car coat, the sleeves of which had fallen too far past his bony wrists.

But standing straight and tall in a fine dark suit.

He was one on four, but in his posture and bearing, it was clear he was a force to be reckoned with, that he would not back down, even as he faced them, two thugs, that cowson McGyffin in his dirty overalls, smiling a dirty smile and …

.... he’d be goddamned….

DS Jago.

At the sound of the slamming car doors, Morse turned to look at him.

Not to Strange, not to Mr. Bright, but to him.

There was no fear in his eyes, nor relief—only a simple acknowledgement, as if he had been expecting him—only a simple nod, filled with that old firm trust, as if he knew he might be a few steps behind him, but that he had known he would get there, all along.


	3. Stand

When it was all over, they stood in a small circle in the center of a passageway flanked by rows of desks, just as they once had long ago.

It seemed impossible that, just like that, all should be as it was before—that, just like that— Thursday should be here, with Morse and Strange and Mr. Bright, restored into their ranks, welcomed back within the fold, just as if it all had never happened.

_City boys, first and last,_ Strange had said. 

And it was true—it was there in each set of eyes that looked to him, that old feeling of camaraderie, of fond regard. They were their own ragtag band of brothers once more.

But yet, everything was different, too. It had been a long and circuitous route that they had travelled from their days at the old Cowley nick, to end up here, in a sterile new office, free from the memories of things past, of all that had broken them apart and brought them together again.

The well-sealed windows at Castle Gate cast precise and pristine rhombuses of white light onto the gray and spacious offices, onto the orderly desks and file cabinets as yet uncluttered with decades of debris. The air was sharp with the scent of new synthetic carpet rather than redolent of wet wool and radiator dust.

And they, too, had changed: Mr. Bright had grown more wizened, and the boyish softness in Strange and Morse’s faces had long since flown, their broad-buckled uniform and sloppy car coat replaced by the well-fitting suits of conscientious young men.

As to how the intervening years had left him, Thursday didn’t care to imagine.

“Alas, I shall be leaving traffic to assume overall command at Castle Gate,” Mr. Bright said. “But with impending losses, I will be needing a reliable detective sergeant… if you’re done with your forward planning steering committee? Sergeant Strange?”

Strange nodded perfunctorily.

“Sir,” he said.

“And a good man to head CID, acting chief inspector? Might you be persuaded to forgo your transfer?”

And there it was.

Just like that.

He was a good man, it seemed, back once again in their good graces. 

“Depends on home, sir,” he said.

Mr. Bright regarded him with a gleam of understanding in his sharp, bird-bright eyes.

Years ago, there had been many a time that Thursday had stood in solidarity with Morse before Mr. Bright’s desk, arguing the cause of youth and enthusiasm against age and authority, but now he realized he had far more in common with Mr. Bright than he would ever have again with either Morse or Strange, who had all of their lives still before them.

He was on the other side of that bridge now, had crossed over to join Mr. Bright. He knew now where his priorities lay—where they would lay—from here on out.

“As does so much,” Mr. Bright murmured.

And then, lastly, Mr. Bright turned to Morse.

To Thursday’s knowledge, the last time the chief superintendent had seen Morse had been that day long ago at Crevecoeur Hall, when he had shot the tiger in the garden maze, and Morse had stumbled off towards the great manor house, following after Bixby, long before anyone had imagined that he might keep right on following, right out of their lives, right out of Oxford.

There was a glint of quiet pride in his eyes, and, Thursday realized that Mr. Bright must have felt it, too, after all of these years: some pang of regret, of having failed Morse on the night of Blenheim Vale.

“Morse,” he said.

And Morse, for once, seemed to understand, to accept the praise there clear in the old man’s ragged voice.

“Sir,” he said.

Thursday wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but it seemed as if there was a quirk of an ironic smile playing around Morse’s wide and mobile mouth—as if to intimate that he, too, never would have dreamed of it, during all of those nights that he had wandered in the woods around Lake Silence—never would have believed that, after all of this time, he would find his way back amongst them.

“Very well.”

The phone rang, then, with a mechanical shrillness, breaking the almost dreamlike spell, and Strange went through a plexiglass-paneled partition to answer it. In another moment, he called out to him.

“It’s Mrs. Thursday on the blower,” he said.

And all of that pounding of adrenaline, all of the wash of relief of the past hour drained away, leaving him with the sense that he was sinking right down into the thin pile of the new carpet, his heart dropping like a stone.

That note.

How could he have left her such an awful note?

This, then, would be his true reckoning—not his face-off against Jago and McGyffin on that gravel path riddled with desolate puddles reflecting gray skies.

Did absence, indeed, make the heart grow fonder? Would she be happy to see him come in once more through the door, past the hall stand?

Or would she be furious with him for having left her with only that note by way of parting, after all these years? A note that had sealed up their lives together in a handful of hastily-written lines, when it was she who deserved to have the last word?

Although, in a way, perhaps, she had already had that, in that final turning away.

_“Sorry’s all I wanted.”_

If that was true, then he had given her that.

_“If it all goes south…”_

_“I’m sorry…”_

_“I meant it, what I said. I’ve always loved you. Always will.”_

It was bloody painful, really, it made him wince, the memory of those words— words that had so wrenched at this heart when he had written them, but which now seemed so maudlin, so trite, in the clear light of day.

“I told her you’re fine,” Strange was saying. “But she doesn’t sound best pleased. She wants to know when you are coming home.”

“Tell her now,” Morse said. 

Thursday swallowed, his deadened heart stirring, beginning to skip a beat and then to race, beating shallowly, high up against his ribs.

If only he could find a way to buy a bit of time, to find a space in which to give Win’s newfound edges the chance to soften, to give her anger a chance to abate … a space in which she might change her mind before she summarily gave him the final heave-ho …. right out of her life for good.

“Go on,” Morse coaxed. “I can manage.”

Thursday scrutinized him, taking in the pale face, the too-bright eyes.

And there it was.

Morse was standing straight enough, his voice was firm and steady—but he _had_ to be a bit shaken, didn’t he? Was hardly a typical day for a Greats don, driving down to a quarry to confront a corrupt councilman, a half-mad copper gone rotten and a couple of churlish heavies…

And with Bix in London, he’d be on his own, wouldn’t he?

“Why don’t you come along, Morse?” Thursday asked.

Morse looked at him blankly for a moment, and, when he spoke, it was only to utter one deadpan syllable.

“What?”

“Well. Bixby is in London, isn’t he?”

“How did you know Bix …” Morse began. Then he let the sentence drop away, and his gaze wandered over to Strange, as if asking him if he had any idea what was addling the old man now.

It was confirmed, then. They must have been talking, they must have met since Morse had returned to Oxford, for them to exchange such a look. Thursday realized at once that perhaps it had been for some time that he’d been an object of their scrutiny. Who had initiated the first inquiry, he wasn’t sure. But now that he saw the knowing glances between them, it was easy enough to imagine them, two unlikely friends, hunched over a couple of pints, down at the pub.

“Thursday seems… changed somehow?” Morse might have posited.

“You have any idea what’s wrong with the old man?” Strange might have asked. “Buggared if I know what’s been going on him lately.”

And … even now that it was all over, Strange sill didn’t appear to know the answer to that question. He raised his eyebrows at Morse and shrugged as if he hadn’t the foggiest.

And why not? Nothing distracted Win so much as a couple of chicks to tend to.

Even if those chicks might be past thirty, large enough to be spilling out of the nest.

“You too, Strange,” he said.

Strange’s round face fell, then, utterly befuddled.

“Sir?”

Win was the consummate hostess …. she wouldn’t kick him out on his ear just yet, not with Morse and Strange in tow. After all that had happened, her heart would go out to them, if not to him; she’d be keen to feed them up, make them a brew, and, in the process, her anger might have time to subside, her scowl to soften....

She’d smile, she’d be pleased to see them, for their sakes if not for his, and, in the process, she might find she was happy to see him, too. 

He ran his hands through his thinning hair, feeling as if he was percolating from head to toe with some sort of frantic energy, a wracking nervous tremor more properly belonging to a younger man.

He didn’t give a damn about the job. Only Win. Even if it was inevitable, even if as soon as the charade was over, and after Morse and Strange had gone, she gave him what for, handed him back her ring.… if only he could stretch out those last few moments....

“Can’t tell me we all couldn’t do with a cuppa or something stronger after a day like this?” Thursday said. “I’ll be needing you to drop me anyway. Might as well stop in.”

“And Morse. Your car’s part of the scene of crime now, isn’t it? What? You going to walk all the way back to Lake Silence?”

Morse scowled. He hadn’t liked that at all, leaving his car there at the quarry. Seemed a flashy thing, a stretcher even on a don’s salary, and Thursday had gathered somehow that it had been a present from Bixby.

But, still, they weren’t exactly in a position to quibble with the officers from exhibits. They’d had a hell of a time explaining what a Greats don from Lonsdale was doing there in the midst of it all in the first place....

Which reminded him…. He’d have to get that map back, too, before any trouble came to him on that score, on top of everything else.

Although, perhaps Strange already knew all about that, too.

“Well,” Thursday said, his voice sounding slightly manic even to his own ears. “Let’s get on then, sergeant.”

“Sir,” Strange said, with a gentle nod, and Thursday wasn’t at all surprised to see the new twist of compassion there, in his face.

Strange had figured it out; he knew just what Thursday was on about, understood just what he was doing.

Of course, he knew. Morse might be too clever by half, but, in matters like these, matters of the heart, it was Strange who was the far savvier, the far more intelligent of the two.

Morse, in the meanwhile was looking confused as hell, as though he never heard of anything so daft.

But it was all that easy for Morse, wasn’t it?

In Morse’s world, Thursday was supposed to go home, where Win would be waiting for him with open arms. They’d kiss on the threshold of the doorway, just like some couple out of an old film.

Morse didn’t know the meaning of it, what it felt like to know you didn’t have the right to look the one you love in the eye.

Even when Morse had hit rock bottom, stewing in the woods around Lake Silence, he had never reached the depths that he, Thursday, had fallen to, while, all the while maintaining the veneer of his respectable outer life.

Morse had always been so honest … even to a fault. Even to the point where you thought he might die of it, to the point where you found yourself wishing he’d acquiesce just a bit, give in, accept the fact that the world was what it was, and not what it might be.

***

Strange drove through the narrow streets, his eyes focused on the noonday traffic, while Morse shifted about in the backseat, restless, as always. An uncomfortable silence had fallen over the car’s dark plush interior, as if they all felt it, the oddness of the situation: it was as if the three of them were setting out on some sort of mad parody of a family outing. 

Morse was looking out the window, and the silence must have been wearing on his over-worn nerves, because, suddenly, apropos of nothing, he spoke, almost more to himself than to either of the pair of them.

“The good ended happily. And the bad unhappily. That’s what fiction means.”

Thursday snorted.

So. That was his take on the day, was it? 

Yes.

It was all that easy for Morse.

Thursday sighed, and turned, not to Morse, but to look out the window at the passing street.

_“Box is fifty-fifty,”_ Strange had reported, as he had walked over to him from the ambulance, to meet him beside the truck bed that had held Dr. DeBryn.

And of course, he was. He always had been, hadn’t he? Fifty-fifty? Never wholeheartedly one thing or the other? Swept along wherever stronger tides took him?

In retrospect, Thursday should have known what DCI Box was all along, should have known that first day, when he had raised his hand to WPC Trewlove.

A bully, really. 

And what’s a bully, but someone taking out his own because he’s been bullied by someone else?

He should have seen it, he should have asked it, right away.

_Whose thumb are you under, Ronnie?_

Perhaps Thursday might have helped Ronnie, once. 

And if things had been ordered as they ought to have been—if he had been Ronnie’s governor instead of the other way ‘round—he might have done. He might have helped him out of that pit he had dug himself into, rather than climbing in to join him.

But Thursday hadn’t thought of that, had he, when he handed Charlie that cheque? That it wasn’t only his and Win’s savings he was handing over in trust, but his entire future, and—in that future—so many others’ futures besides? With that cheque, went his authority, and with that, went his strength, and with his strength, his ability to help anyone else, leastways himself.

He might have done right by Ronnie, once. Steered him clear. 

Thursday’s scowl deepened as he looked out the window at the passing shops. And then, amidst the white limestone storefronts and dark stained doors, he saw them, in the heavy-framed bow window, fragile and feathered bits of sky blue and pale green and dandelion yellow.

“Stop here for a moment.”

“You aren’t stopping for tobacco now?” Morse protested. 

“No,” Thursday said. “Want to buy a present for Win.”

Strange looked up into the rear-view mirror, back at Morse, who met his eyes and shook his head.

He could read their expressions even out of the corner of his vision.

_The old man’s gone dotty on us_.

Young, weren’t they, to be so damned cynical? Why shouldn’t he buy a gift for his bride? Not a romantic bone in either of their bodies.

Despite the bemused look on his face, Strange dutifully pulled up to the kerb, and, as soon as the car rolled to a stop, Thursday swung himself out of the car, feeling lighter than he had in months. Walking up to the doors of the shop, he could have been twenty again, a two-day pass in his pocket and a heart and mind full of Win. He set his hand on the handle of one of the double glass doors and pulled it open.

Inside, there was a flurry of movement as cages jostled and bounced at the sound of the bell over the door. Canaries and parakeets flitted about in their cages, and puppies in a rectangular enclosure stepped over one another, trying to get a better look at the newcomer. Only in a hutch by the window did a sense of calm prevail, as a trio of doleful, long-eared rabbits merely twitched their noses in curiosity, their big eyes solemn as they seemed to watch him sideways, reminding him inexplicably of Morse.

In the end, Thursday chose a pair of canaries. They were lovely little things. Spots of brightest yellow in a gray world—as yellow as the candlelight leaves that had shone against the cloud-heavy skies as they had driven out to the quarry.

And the way they sang and sang on, despite it all…

Beautiful.

They weren’t practical ... not like the new oven with which he had once hoped—in what must have been a moment of madness—to smooth things over. No. They had no purpose other than to be beautiful. They were simple, small beings that, even without meaning to, could never do anyone harm.

It was just what they needed, their music. A sound to fill the empty spaces of a house that had been so quiet, too quiet, these last months.

Thursday drew out his time making his purchase, fumbling about for his wallet, counting out the change. In one corner of his mind, he could imagine Morse and Strange’s impatient faces as they sat in the parked car. But now that he was here, in the shop, he realized that every minute he remained there, was a minute that the worst could not happen.

At this moment, he thought, I still have a chance.

At this moment, I can imagine that Win still loves me.

****

Thursday returned to the car in triumph, feeling as if he was floating on air.

Win was bound to be utterly enchanted.

Whose heart wouldn’t melt at the sight of such innocence, such loveliness?

So why should Strange and Morse, two men so utterly different from one another, be looking at him with identical expressions of stunned incredulity?

Well.

Lads didn’t know what they were on about, did they?

Thursday opened the back door and deposited the cage in Morse’s lap.

“Hold these for a while, will you?” he said.

Morse took the cage, cradling it in his long and sensitive hands, looking at it uncertainly, as Thursday got back into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

“You should get them a bigger house, if you are really going to keep them,” Morse said.

Thursday turned around in his seat to look at Morse. He was holding the cage at arm’s length, watching the birds flit about within the bars, an odd expression on his face.

“I will,” he said. 

****

He had walked through that arching brick doorway a thousand times without so much as a thought, but now that he was here again, against all odds, he felt more anxious than he had been the first time he had first come round for her at her parents’ house. 

“Home,” he called out, hopefully.

The moment he saw her, the moment he took in the tension etched in the lines of her beautiful face, he realized he had been mistaken, that he had it wrong, all along.

Win hadn’t been off in the kitchen, or hoovering, or listening to the radio, but rather standing right at the end of the hallway, as if she had been waiting, almost willing the door to open. Even before he managed to close the door behind them, she had crossed the hall in a few quick strides and took him into her arms, burying her face in his collar. Thursday froze, stunned by his reception. It was all he could do to keep upright, inhaling the warm floral scent of her hair and holding her close in a simple embrace that once he might have taken for granted, but which now seemed a miracle, fit to set his old heart to burst.

It was for her, then, just as it was for him.

_“I’ve loved you too long to stop loving you now.”_

They had been a part of each other’s lives for so long, it wasn’t possible to untwine the threads that bound them. And so they stood now, like two vines seeking the sun, unsure where one ended and the other began

Finally, she pulled away, and looked up into his face with shining eyes.

And then her gaze wandered to the two men behind him as they shifted their weight from foot to foot, standing awkwardly in their hall.

In that moment, the sharp edges of Morse’s face seemed to soften, the austere Greats don who moved with such ease about his rooms at Lonsdale seemed to slouch, as if he were falling backwards into time, turning into some younger version of himself.

“Mrs. Thursday,” he murmured, with a tug on his ear.

Morse darted a furtive look into the living room, and Thursday wondered if it must not feel strange to Morse to be back in this house—if he was thinking of how, two years ago, he had stood in that very spot, by the telephone stand, and—in two minutes and forty-six seconds, an exact figure Thursday knew from the phone records—made a decision that would so change the course of his life.

Strange, for his part, simply nodded in what seemed to be a silent apology, his eyes clear with a light of sympathy, which—painfully enough—Win seemed to have understood, making Thursday to feel somewhat like an overgrown child, his fears and motivations utterly transparent.

“Morse and Strange didn’t have anywhere, so….” Thursday leapt in, then...

But he was one step behind her; she was no longer looking at Morse and Strange, but rather taking in the two canaries, twittering about in their rounded cage.

“Fred? What’s this?”

“They’re for you. I just thought ..... Well. They’re lovely, aren’t they? Just like you.”

Morse turned away and scrubbed up the hair at the back of his nape, as if he couldn’t bear to look.

It was a bit much, really, that Morse of all people should be cringing in second-hand embarrassment, critiquing his finesse. 

“I’ll put a brew on,” Win said, steadily. And then her knowing eyes seemed to scrutinize each of their faces, leading them each to look at the others as if to ask what she might be seeing there.

“Or perhaps I’ll bring out something stronger….” she said.

And then she turned back into the kitchen, heading off with her familiar, light, quick step, a rhythm as familiar to him as the beat of his own heart.

****

They sat around the dining room table, two bottles of Scotch set right at the center of Win’s lace tablecloth, drinking steadily, one glass after the other, the quality of their conversation declining along with the level of amber liquor in the pair of tall bottles.

Just the night before, Thursday had thought that he’d lost everything, but now—just as if someone had come into a room and snapped on a light—it was all here, all was restored to him, in sharp and vivid detail: Win’s china cabinet, tucked with books and bric-a-brac and topped with an enormous spider plant, the wooden salt and pepper shakers, standing like two small space pods beside the Scotch, the rough texture of the lace tablecloth beneath his fingers, and most of all, the quiet thrum of sweet domestic happiness that hummed through the room—was all brought back to him, as if from the dead.

It seemed to Thursday that even the white and gold and green vines of flowers on the wallpaper were blooming a little more brightly along with the newfound hope that lay deep in his chest.

Win was seated right beside him and had even poured herself a glass to join them. He could hardly take his eyes off her as she took each small, tentative sip of whiskey, a smile on her face. Morse and Strange were a far cry from Sam and Joan, it was true, but still, it had been a long time since more than one chair round the table had been occupied.

Win had always had a soft spot for Morse, in the same way that she had for the black and white stray cat that had been lurking around their door of late, and the idea that he, Fred, had gone out to his recuse, seemed to redeem him in her eyes.

 _I want my husband back,_ was what she said.

And, strangely enough, in giving her up, in going out to the quarry, he seemed to have won her over again. He was the just copper, the protective father, the man she could trust, once more.

Whether he deserved the glow in her eyes, was another matter. But Thursday would take whatever he could get, and this time, he knew he would never again hold her faith in him so cheaply, from here on out, for whatever time was allotted to him.

Strange lifted a bottle and poured more Scotch generously into his glass.

Perhaps it could be put down to a case of nerves after such a trying day, or to an excess of drink, lowering inhibitions, but it seemed somehow that Strange and Morse had almost traded personalities … or perhaps the changes had been a long time coming and Thursday had either—in the case of Morse—not been there to see them, or—in the case of Strange—not noticed as he had been so consumed with his own, inner concerns.

At any rate, Win seemed to have noticed it, too, and her eyes were bright with amusement as Strange leaned back in his chair, contemplating his glass of Scotch just as if he were a discerning connoisseur, a man of the world; and, indeed, he carried himself with a new sense of gravitas these days, was far more self-assured than the easygoing lad who had bumbled about in Morse’s sharp-eyed wake—so much so, that, watching Strange now, it was all too easy to imagine him one day overseeing command of a nick from behind a chief superintendent’s desk.

Whereas Morse, who had often been so dour, so joyless, as a young DC, seemed to be unable to stop laughing. Whether he was giddy from the excess of alcohol—(he must have learned to have laid off the stuff at some point, Thursday reckoned, to have picked up his degree, so perhaps his tolerance was low)—or whether he was light-headed with the relief that he—having fled police work after Blenheim Vale—had returned, faced his greatest fears and, this time, managed to come out on the other side unscathed, Thursday wasn’t sure.

Whichever it was, Thursday was glad of it. Made his heart swell to see his onetime charges coming into their own, finding a place where they could be comfortable with themselves.

“What I want to know is,” Morse said, his blue eyes shining with a mischievous, glittering sort of brilliance, “What I want to know is… Is Jakes a _real_ cowboy? I mean.. does he lasso bulls and ride horses and such?”

Strange frowned and looked into his glass, as if he hadn’t given the matter much thought.

Thursday chuckled and took a drink.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seemed, after all. Seeing Strange, who had grown into such steady and stolid presence, looking utterly befuddled at one of Morse’s pronouncements was something familiar, a poignant echo of their younger days.

And it was alright, Thursday was satisfied, he had passed the torch.

“I don’t know, matey,” Strange said. “Haven’t asked him.”

“Haven’t _asked_ him?” Morse asked, as if Strange were a bit dense. “That’s the very first thing I’d have asked.”

Strange shrugged. “Haven’t kept in touch much. Odd card at Christmas. That’s been it, really.” 

“No?” Morse asked. “Well. So you must have his address, then.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Well. Let’s write to him,” Morse said. He swept his bleary gaze about the room, then, as if looking for a pen and a piece of paper, so that they might write to him that instant. “Ask him if he has a cowboy hat and if he smokes Marlboros now, like in the advertisements.”

The canaries sang out, then, as if in answer to Morse’s raised voice; it was a sprightly little tune, accompanied by the soft flutter of feathers.

Win cast them a dark look, and Thursday realized they, too, had been a mistake, just as his dawdling had been.

She didn’t hear the music. She was seeing only another chore, another thing to clean.

“Who’s going to take care of them?” she asked.

“I’ll do it,” Thursday said. “I used to keep birds when I was a boy.”

“It’s sort of nice,” Morse said, wobbling a bit in his chair to look at them. “I mean, they sound nice. The singing. The singing sounds nice. Bix is always going on about getting a dog.”

Strange snorted a laugh.

“Really?” he asked.

And Thursday thought he knew what Strange was getting at. He didn’t seem the type for a dog, Bixby. All gold cufflinks and perfectly tailored suits, expensive shoes and his hair just so—hardly the sort who would want dog hair all over his fine clothes and finer furniture

“Yes,” Morse said. “He had one growing up. Lafayette.”

“Oh,” Strange said, as if that made sense. “Some posh, French breed, is it?”

“No,” Morse said. “He was named Lafayette. After his school. He was a stray who used to hang around at football practice. So Bix took him home.”

Strange started laughing, not so much because he saw anything odd in Morse’s words, but because he was so sloshed that, at that point, he might have laughed at anything.

Thursday, however, stopped short, and looked to Win, who was looking right back at him. It was ingrained in them, still, after all of this time—that habit of checking with the other, when one of the kids said something the sounded a bit off.

When the hell would Bixby ever have gone to a school named after a French general?

And then, Thursday remembered that first time he had met with Morse, once he had found he was living in Oxford, and what we had said in the pub.

_“So, Jakes got married. And to an American of all things. What a coincidence. Funny how the world works, isn’t it?”_

Thursday frowned and looked at him, but Morse was busy peeling the label off one of the empty bottles.

He had always known that there was some story there, that Bixby was not all he appeared to be. He should have felt concerned at Morse’s unwitting disclosure, he supposed, but instead he felt vaguely comforted. Whatever the truth of Bixby was, as long as Morse knew it, he supposed that was good enough, then.

“Maybe we should invite Jakes for Christmas,” Morse said.

Thursday rolled his eyes.

So.

He was back on Sergeant Jakes again, was he?

“He can ride up to the Radcliffe Camera on his horse,” Morse said, in such an off-hand voice, that Strange burst out laughing. A sound which set Morse off again, so that they were both laughing like a couple of loons.

Win smiled into her glass and took another sip.

“Or …” Morse breathed, holding onto his side as though it caused him pain. “Or… we could all go to Wyoming. Could you imagine his face? If we all came galloping up on horseback?”

Strange looked at him, then, with a narrowed eye, and in a terrible cowboy movie accent, muttered, “We’re city boys, first and last, pardner.”

Morse, who had been just about to take a drink, snorted appreciatively. 

“Hmmmmmm,” he hummed, and took another sip, as if trying to steady himself.

Then he set his glass down smartly on the table as if he had something important to say.

“Have you heard about the moon landing?” he asked.

“I might have, yeah,” Strange said, incredulously.

“Well. What do you think of that?”

“Think of what?“

“To look up there, to look at the moon, and to think someone has _walked_ on it?“

Thursday sobered at that. It was little wonder Morse should be so taken with the idea. He had reached further than he ever thought he might have once, hadn’t he?

Win was shaking her head at the pair of them, tears standing at the corners of her bright eyes. Thursday had thought that he was bringing her a couple of chicks to mind, but a couple of clowns, it seemed, stood in just as well.

The doorbell rang, then, and Thursday pushed his chair back from the table to answer it.

He padded down the hall and opened the door to find Joss Bixby standing there on the top step, his usually tanned and smiling face turned to a taut, pale mask.

“Is he dead?”

Thursday was, for a moment, so stunned by Bixby’s grim appearance, that he couldn’t make sense of the words, couldn’t fathom who he meant by _‘he.’_

Why should Bixby look so distraught over poor Ronnie, a man whom he had never met?

“What?” Thursday asked.

Bixby lifted up a familiar-looking map—it was the map that Thursday had found in Osbert Page’s flat, the one he had given to Morse to see if he might make anything of the enigmatic initials, _HB._

“I went out to this quarry. His car’s down there. And a corpse under a sheet. And no one there would tell me a damn thing.”

Thursday was just about to explain, when, in the next moment, Bixby’s face flooded with a wash of relief—as if, just like that, someone had snapped on the lights, as if, just like that, his life had been restored to him—right as Thursday felt a heavy brush at his left shoulder. It was Morse, his eyes still slightly unfocused, but his face somehow instantly sober, hurrying past him in the narrow hallway, out towards the door.

It was an odd, stilted sort of pantomime that unfolded there at the front step. They didn’t embrace as he and Win had done, nor did they make any further sign of emotion at all, beyond Bixby’s initial shock of stunned and unexpected happiness. But, from the almost electrical charge in the air around them, Thursday felt sure they might have done, if they had been alone. If it weren’t for an audience of passers-by on the pavement. If it weren’t for him.

Instead, they simply turned away, walking almost in lock step with one another, back to the blue Jag parked in their drive.

He thought that Morse might at least look back as he got into the passenger’s seat, nod a swift goodbye, but, instead, it was as if he, Thursday, did not exist at all. As if the whole world did not exist, outside of the weird energy that seemed to crackle between the two of them, as if to form a bubble, eclipsing all else. 

Even him, standing, as he was, right at the door.

Thursday felt a flicker of resentment as he watched the car pull away, even though he knew he scarcely had the right. Morse didn’t owe him anything; most likely, if Morse had known the truth of it, of how far he had fallen from the standard he had once held for him, he would not have been there at all.

Still, it didn’t sit right, after all they had gone through that day, that Morse should leave like that, without even a word, in just the same way he had left two years ago.

Morse didn’t need to rush off, just because the great Bixby had snapped his fingers. He wasn’t anybody’s dog.

Although, even as Thursday stood at the threshold, scowling softly out onto the emptied drive, there was another part of him that, if he was honest with himself, had recognized Morse’s actions for what they were.

The way Morse had moved past him, the manner in which he had strode, single-minded, down the drive, was with the same deliberateness with which he had moved towards the man whom he had heard cry out with pain, buried beneath the rubble of a fallen tower.

It was the same way in which Thursday had seen Morse move to the aid of a man who had lain trapped, perhaps dying, under the concrete and iron wreckage of Cranmer House.


	4. Speak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally got to Cowboy Jakes!  
> Since I moved the locale to Wyoming, I let the pavement be the sidewalk and the post be the mail... :0)

For the first few miles, they said nothing.

And what was there to say?

Endeavour found himself looking out the window, watching the trees pass by in a steady blur of sunlit yellow, because it was easier, somehow, than having to take in the taut lines of Bixby’s face, the tension in his hands clutching onto the steering wheel, or the bleakness in his eyes as he kept his gaze fixed on the road before him—knowing that he was the one who had put that there.

Endeavour supposed he should say that he was sorry.

But he wasn’t sorry. If he had to, he would have done it all over again.

What else could he have done, once he had puzzled the meaning of them out, those enigmatic initials, _HB_?

What else could he have done, once he had gone to confirm his theory with Max, only to find the telephone dangling from its cord, the cracked glasses on the floor?

Although, of course, Bixby’s argument would be that he had had no business going out to the mortuary in the first place.

But as Endeavour had sat in his study, poring over the map that Thursday had left with him, clicking away at a pen held aloft by his ear, he had felt it—that old rush of adrenaline, that familiar skip of his heart sparked by that sudden burst of glorious comprehension.

Once he had started to pull at that thread, he could no sooner stop than he could stop himself from breathing…..

Endeavour shot a hand out against the dashboard, bracing himself as he lurched forwards in his seat, as, suddenly, the Jag was reeling, pulling up onto the grass along a deserted stretch of road.

He whipped his head around, turning at once to Bix.

“What are you….?” he began.

He didn’t even process that Bixby was moving towards him until his hands were reaching out to cup his face, until his full weight was pressing over him, warm and heavy, pushing him back against the car door as his mouth closed over his, not so much in a heat of sudden passion, as with the insistence of a drowning man clinging on to whatever was closest at hand, even if that meant dragging it under the waves right along with him.

Endeavour reached up and took hold of Bixby’s wrists, guiding him back to create a space between them.

“What are you doing?” he sputtered. “What is this?”

But Bixby, undeterred, was rushing forward again, with such blind determination that Endeavour drew up one knee to halt his progress.

“Bix,” he said. “ _Bix.”_

And then, with the same swiftness with which Bixby had hurled himself towards him, he flew back into the driver’s seat, running a hand through his smooth, dark hair—and it wasn’t until that moment that Endeavour knew why Bix had been holding on to the steering wheel so tightly; his hand was shaking, a tremble that seemed to permeate his whole being, his usual unrelenting, upbeat energy turned inside-out, somehow, into something frantic.

Endeavour lay a hand firmly on his shoulder.

“Bix,” he said. “Bix, it’s all right.”

But Bixby only swallowed, shook his head.

“I don’t know why you would do that to me,” he managed.

Any fledging hint of sympathy Endeavour had felt for him went cold at the words.

“I didn’t do _anything_ to you.” 

“When I went out to that quarry….”

“Who told you to rummage through my things?” Endeavour shot back.

“I had to. I knew it. I knew what would happen the day that Inspector Thursday turned up at the house. I _knew_ you’d plunge right back into it all.”

“Oh. So. I’m that simple, am I?” Endeavour asked. “That predictable?”

“No,” Bix said. “But you are that proud. I don’t know what you think you have to prove to these people….”

“I don’t…”

“They had us _arrested,_ Endeavour. If you don’t remember, then I certainly do. The look on your face, when we were in those holding cells … I can’t forget that. It was as if you were gone from me.”

“I don’t … I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bixby laughed, and Endeavour wished that he wouldn’t. It was a laugh utterly without mirth, a laugh so unlike his usual laugh as to leave Endeavour spinning with an odd sort of dislocation, as if he were lost in a murky wood.

“That’s how it goes,” Bixby said. “How it always goes. You don’t want to talk about it. So we don’t talk about it.”

“Why?” Endeavour asked. “What’s the point of it?”

Bixby didn’t answer; instead, he looked grimly out through the windscreen, out into the candlelight world.

“Well,” he said, at last. “Maybe you can forget. Maybe you can forgive them. But I can’t.”

For a long while, they said nothing, the shadow of the day of their first attempted flight to France settling between them like a heavy fog rolling over an autumn field …. until Endeavour could see it, could hear it: the wail of the sirens, the confusion, the handcuffs, the bars of the small cell, the dreamlike unreality of sitting in the two-tone green cinderblock interrogation room, placed on the opposite side of the table from Thursday and Jakes, with Strange standing guard at the door…..

“He….” Endeavour began. “He didn’t want to do that. Thursday. It was all just … just a terrible misunderstanding.”

“Oh?” Bix asked. “And what of what brought you to the lake house in the first place? What of that?”

Endeavour turned away, looked back out the window.

“You don’t owe them a thing,” Bixby said. “Not one goddamned thing.”

“If I lost you…” he mused, then. “I … I can’t go back to how I lived before. I just _can’t_ , old man.”

Endeavour took a deep breath. Because now they were getting nearer the truth of it … weren’t they?

“Who would say you have to?” Endeavour asked.

“You know no one else knows the truth of me.”

“And that’s my fault? My responsibility?”

“I just never thought you’d be so selfish. That’s all.”

 _“Selfish?”_ Endeavour snapped.

Another silence fell, then, one more brittle than the first, as if they knew they were hovering too close to the brink of it.

“Bix,” Endeavour murmured, at last. “I can’t be your everything.”

But Bixby made no reply.

“I …” Endeavour continued. “I didn’t do it because I thought I had something to prove.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Well,” he allowed. “Perhaps …. perhaps a little. But… Oh, I don’t know. It’s just something I’m _good_ at. I just wanted to help, that’s all. And I think… I think something’s been a bit wrong. With Thursday.”

Bix let out a scathing noise, as if that was a matter about which he could not possibly care less.

“I know you didn’t get the best impression of him … that day,” Endeavour said. “But you didn’t know me before. You didn’t know us before. Thursday was always there for me. And I just wanted… I just wanted to help. Not only with the case. But. Just to be there. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“And you had to drive right down to that quarry?” Bixby asked. “Did you wait for anyone, at all? Or did you just tear off down there?”

Endeavour didn’t answer, and Bixby snorted softly, as if he didn’t need to, as if he already knew what his answer would be.

Then, Bix shook his head and rested his hand on the steering wheel as he gazed out before him, out into the translucent golden wood glowing under gray skies.

“Do you know what the worst part of it was?” he asked.

Endeavour looked up, sharply; for once, he had not the slightest idea where he was going.

“I was jealous of Mrs. Thursday. Can you imagine? _Actually_ envious of some poor woman whom I’ve never met, who has never done a thing to me, of some poor woman who might very well have lost her husband.”

Endeavour said nothing, only furrowed his brow. He didn’t understand. And Bixby, if he was anything, was always easily understood.

It was a jarring sort of feeling, like finding a new door in a long-familiar house.

“If that had been Inspector Thursday under that sheet,” Bix began, each word wrung out of him as if against his will, “Mrs. Thursday would have been his widow. At the funeral, she’d sit front and center; the police would probably present her with, I don’t know, some horrible engraved watch. They’d all take turns mumbling words of empty consolation to her, but her grief would be acknowledged, all the same. And everyone would recognize her loss. He would be hers, even in death.”

“She’d have her family, her children, and every Christmas and every birthday, when they all gathered, they’d say, ‘remember when Dad would do _this,’_ or ‘remember when Dad would do _that,’_ and their eyes would tear up a bit, but they’d smile, too, at the memory.”

“What would I have?” Bixby asked, then. “Where would I be? Shuffled off to the back row even as your coffin is lowered into the ground? Left to stand on the fringes, to listen as they all whispered, ‘Oh, there’s Morse’s ‘friend,’ with some dirty little wink?”

Bixby shook his head.

“I wouldn’t even have… I wouldn’t even have one person to talk to about you, to remember you with. It would be just as if none of it was real. As if none of it had happened. As if it had all been smoke and mirrors, some sort of fever dream, and I’d wake up, and….”

He looked back out over the steering wheel, then, his face desolate, as if he were not looking out into yellow trees amidst gray skies, but into a long and undefinable loneliness.

Not for the first time, Endeavour realized how much it was true that they were cut from a different cloth, he and Bix. Endeavour knew well how to live in his own solitude. He didn’t welcome the loneliness, didn’t revel in it, but he knew how to navigate its waters…

But Bix….

Bix turned away and looked out the driver’s seat window, his voice cracking with self-loathing. 

“So. What sort of sick bastard does that make me, then, I wonder….?” 

Endeavour frowned.

He wasn’t sure that what Bix had said was so terrible a thing to admit, so much as it was an honest one.

Wasn’t that it, what everyone was always thinking, as they stood about, making small talk at a funeral?

Thank Christ it wasn’t me?

It wasn’t so much that someone should think such a thing, that needled at Endeavour, but that _Bixby_ should.

He was always so quick to laugh away the clouds, Bix, that Endeavour hadn’t thought it possible for his voice to crack so, with that trace of something like despair.

Could it be that…. he hadn’t considered Bixby even capable of such depths? Hadn’t thought it possible that he had such feelings to begin with?

Had he even stopped to spare a moment to think of Bixby at all?

No, he hadn’t. Not really. He had done what he had always done, acted on the impulse of the moment, and damn the consequences… even if perhaps the consequences were no longer his to suffer alone.

_Had_ he been selfish?

It was true, what Endeaovur had said. It was too much, he couldn’t be his everything.

But, it was true, too, that his life was no longer fully his own, either.

Endeavour couldn’t be his everything, but he was _something._ Something he had never been before, although he had always longed to be. But, now that he was…

It was as if he didn’t quite know what to do about it.

They lived too much in the shadows, perhaps that was the problem. Hiding away from the world out at Lake Silence, hiding what they were to one another from inquisitive or voyeuristic eyes.

Could two people really survive in the world, with only one another to give them anchor?

If you live in the shadows long enough, you forget the sunlight.

“Maybe …. “ Endeavour began. “Maybe we should … I don’t know. Maybe, it would be better if … maybe we need to settle somewhere. I mean… really settle. It’s not as if we have to live in fear, anymore. The law has changed.” He huffed a rueful laugh. “We’re both far over 21 at this point.”

“You could come with me,” Endeavour ventured, then. “Up to the colleges. To a concert. You could meet my colleagues. Such as they are.”

For a long time, Bixby said nothing; he seemed to have gone utterly still.

“Are you asking me on a date?” he asked at last, a bit incredulously.

“I suppose,” Endeavour said. “And why not? A degree of discretion may be necessary in your career. But I’m not all that sure that it is in mine. No one will say anything. They won’t want to appear gauche.”

“Or….” Endeavour said, “we could go to a pub, to a quiz night, with my…. ” and here, he hesitated ….

But then, at this point, they were, weren’t they?

“… with my old friends from Cowley.”

“I don’t think that would work,” Bix said.

“Why?”

“Endeavour. They are standing police officers. Changes in the law notwithstanding. I don’t think we’d go over all that well with that crowd, do you?” 

“I think they all know, to be honest,” Endeavour said. “They are detectives. And it’s not as if we’ve been all that subtle, really. But then again, subtlety really isn’t your thing.”

Bixby quirked a wan smile.

“You made a joke,” he said.

“Been known to happen.”

“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me, then?”

“Oh. Well. I’m not sure that you’ve done anything that needs my forgiveness, really.”

Bixby smiled again, a struggling thing, like a bird, caught in a net.

Endeavour wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. He had wanted to maintain a space for himself, but now that he had done so, he felt like nothing so much as a character in a play, a bombastic protagonist who, with a dramatic wave of his arm, clears a table in order to lay out a map, only to send precious china and crystal crashing to the ground in the process.

It was true what Endeavour had said, but in the wake of it all, the truth felt to be a hollow consolation.

Because, suddenly the truth meant less to him than the remnants of pain on Bixby’s face, a look that he wanted nothing so much than to erase from all memory.

In one deft motion, Endeavour lunged across the seat, taking Bix’s hand in his and pushing him into the door as he half-straddled him, plastering their mouths together in a kiss, a kiss in which he tried to put all the things that he could not say, would never say …. but perhaps, as it always was with him, it was too much, because then it was Bixby’s turn to pull away, to struggle beneath him like a man coming up from air.

“Shouldn’t we…?” Bix managed.

“Shouldn’t we what?”

“Go back up to the house?”

Endeavour grinned. The man before him—or, to be more precise, beneath him, squashed rather handily into the corner of the seat where, no doubt, the door handle was prodding him dully in the back— was once again his own familiar Bixby, first and foremost a creature of comfort.

As contradictory as he could be at times, one of the most wonderous things about him—something that seemed to Endeavour nearly miraculous—was that, at the end of the day, he really wasn’t all that complicated.

“Oh. No,” Endeavour said. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well … what if someone were to come along?”

And what if they did?

He was done with it, living in the shadows, finished with it.

Endeavour said nothing, only shrugged, and deepened his grin.

Bixby laughed, a bit devilishly, and then leaned forward in a rush to press his mouth against his in a long and searching kiss.

***

Max was just filling up the kettle, looking out the single window that stood over the sink to where the clear light of morning fell gently over the wildness of garden, when he heard it: a soft knock at the door.

He knew at once who it would be. Of all the men who knew the details of what had happened the day before—and the night before that—there was only one who would drop by like this, utterly unannounced, in the aftermath.

And what did that say about him?, he wondered vaguely. That the only person to consider that he might, in fact, have been rattled by his recent ordeal—despite his outward show of stoicism and his attempt at wry humor over a pair of cracked glasses—should be a man with whom he had not spoken for nearly three years?

Max padded into the living room and opened the front door, and, just as he had expected, Morse was there, standing on the walkway, right alongside the fading red roses that climbed along the bricks. He looked much the same as ever—his jaw a bit shaper, his face a bit leaner—with the addition of a few new lines around his eyes, which, Max was surprised to learn, were actually laugh lines, which crinkled as he smiled—a careful, questioning, solicitous smile—in greeting.

“Max. How are you?”

Max felt something inside of him go still at the words—Morse’s face, of course, he remembered well, but that particular low and soft and rounded note that he seemed to strike in moments such as these was something that he had quite forgotten, but which now felt achingly familiar.

He stood for a moment, considering him. It was a moment, Max had to admit, he had thought of often, but now that it was actually here, was not without its traces of awkwardness.

He had thought they were friends, once.

And Max couldn’t say it didn’t rankle a bit, knowing just how quickly he had been forgotten.

A simple postcard, letting him know how he was getting on would have been appreciated. Or perhaps a telephone call, once he had returned to Oxford, letting him know of his whereabouts on the planet, letting him know he was all right, not wasting away in another little shack someplace, would have been welcome.

It certainly would have been better than being left to hear the news from Sergeant Strange, as they had stood in the mortuary, over the body of Osbert Page.

“We’re questioning a couple of dons who were in the library the night Mr. Page was killed,” Strange had said, with an air of delight at having a bit of gossip to divulge that was not altogether keeping with the solemnity of the place. “You’ll never guess who one of them is.”

“Morse,” Max had said, simply.

Strange blinked, surprised.

“You knew?”

“No,” Max had said. “But who else could it be?”

It certainly wasn’t as if he and the sergeant shared a particularly large circle of acquaintances, for there to be anyone else known mutually to the both of them who might be teaching up at the colleges…

“May I … May I come in?” Morse asked.

Too late, Max realized he had let the moment drag on, and now he shook his head, coming back to himself.

“Of course,” he said, opening the door further to allow Morse to come through.

Morse stepped inside, ducking his head as he came in through the low doorway, and then looked around with frank curiosity, scrutinizing his rather unremarkable sitting room with his usual thoroughness—taking in the prints of colorful brook trout that hung on the wall, the arrangement of heavy camel-colored sofas, and lighting at last, of course, on the bookcases, as if to begin already to read the titles there.

Max began to feel a bit disgruntled at his intrusiveness, but, in a moment, he found himself wishing that Morse would have kept on with his investigation of the room, as his big, probing, blue eyes fell searchingly onto him.

“I just thought I’d see how you were getting on. After ….”

He let the sentence drop away, and Max shrugged. 

“Well enough,” he said, half-surprised to hear that his voice was far more brittle than he had intended. “I’m made of sturdier stuff than one might imagine.”

“I know that,” Morse said.

And then that was all.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Max asked. “I was just putting the kettle on.”

“Please,” Morse said.

For all that Morse was so taciturn, his big eyes spoke volumes, seeming to almost unconsciously rove every which way, over him, over his modest house… what was he searching for? Signs of a restless night? Empty bottles of Scotch, strewn carelessly over the table?

Max put the kettle on the burner, and, suddenly, it seemed too much, puttering about in the corner of his small, galley kitchen under Morse’s blue gaze—it was all too much, in so small a space. Made it all too near.

“Where’s DeBryn?” Morse had called. “Alive?”

The shock of it, of hearing that voice ….

It had dredged up in Max two conflicting emotions at once, as he had lain, bound and gagged, in the back of the truck bed— a glimmer of relief at hearing those low and trusted tones … right alongside of a sickening plummet of despair, falling like a cold stone into his gut.

It seemed disloyal even to think it, but, truth be told, he had rather have heard, at that desperate and critical moment, the voice of Thursday or Strange—in short, that of an armed police officer, rather than that of a long-lost DC turned Lonsdale don.

He had seen first-hand the results of Morse’s bouts of recklessness all too often.

In rather more close-up and graphic detail than anyone, actually.

“Perhaps we might go out into the garden,” Max suggested mildly, eager to escape Morse’s scrutiny. “There’s a bit of a chill in the morning, but I find it quite bracing.”

“All right,” Morse said

And that irritated Max, too, no end, that Morse, always so contrary, should suddenly be so agreeable to his every suggestion.

He certainly didn’t need coddling.

He set out two cups on a tray, along with milk and sugar and ….

“Would you like me to get that…?” Morse suggested helpfully, moving forwards, as if to relieve him from the perfectly mundane task.

Max blinked at him, and Morse drew back.

“You might get the door for me,” he said, crisply.

“Of course,” Morse replied. And then he stepped back, his eyes darting around as if to look for it right that very moment.

Max sighed and picked up the tray. Then, he led him out through the sitting room and to the back door.

***

As promised, Morse held the door open for Max as he carried the tray out onto the patio outside. And at once, Max regretted his suggestion.

He’d been rather busy these past few weeks, what with the case and the mysterious corpse found buried in the concrete foundations of Cranmer House, and, in the meanwhile, his garden had fallen into a soft sort of autumnal neglect; the heads of the zinnias and wildflowers had long since gone to seed, the tea roses had grown into the wildest sort of bramble, and yellow leaves scuttled across the patio stones or else fell drifting, floating in the birdbath.

He was about to murmur words of excuse, but Morse was looking about the place with rapt appreciation, taking it upon himself to settle himself in one of the white iron-wrought chairs on the patio.

“Well. This is a first,” Max said, setting down the tray before him. “How did you know where I live?”

“You were in the book.”

Morse continued looking all about, leaving no stone unturned.

In fact, Max might not have been surprised if he were to get up from his seat and start looking under the patio stones at any moment.

“It’s nice,” Morse said.

Max grimaced, feeling rather protective of the little place. Morse, no doubt, from the sound of things, had grown accustomed to an endless expanse of cultivated Italian gardens, perfectly manicured by an industrious staff.

“Well,” Max said, likewise casting his gaze about and then up into the brightening, pale blue sky. “Something has to be lovely. But, yes. As a spot, I’m rather fond.”

For a moment, he said nothing, and an easy silence fell between them, punctuated only by the soft coo of a dove up in the eaves of the house and a flurry of finches pulling black seeds from dried stalks.

“So,” Max said, then. “What brings you back to Oxford?”

“Oh,” Morse said, surprised, it seemed, that the that talk was being brought back round to him. “We’ve been here a while. It will be two years in January, actually.”

Max raised his eyebrows. It was odd to hear that easy drop of the plural pronoun falling from Morse’s lips.

Odder still that he should have been back for so long without anyone from Cowley running into him.

“Last I heard,” Max said, as if the matter were of absolutely no importance to him, “You were in France.”

“Yes. We were for a while. And then we came back to Oxford. It was.... It was Bixby’s idea, actually.”

Well. At least the fellow didn’t insult his intelligence by pretending he didn’t know something of his situation with Bixby, there was that …

But otherwise, Max couldn’t say it wasn’t a bit of a punch in the gut, to hear his return had been entirely predicated on the whim of a perfect stranger.

He might have hoped that it been Morse who had wanted to come back… that perhaps he had found that he had missed them, after all, that he was sorry that he had left like that, without even a hint of a goodbye.

“So what brought you back, then?” Max asked.

“Ah. Well. I don’t speak French.”

“And does Bixby?” Max queried, with a huff of a laugh.

“Yes,” Morse said.

Max couldn’t say that he wasn’t a bit surprised by that last—but it did give some clue as to how it all must have unfolded.

So. They had torn off to France, and it must have seemed the height of adventure. Even, he supposed, one might say… of romance, and then they had realized …

Now what?

He could just imagine Morse there, stubborn and thoroughly English. It suited him all too well not to learn French, no doubt, as it gave him the perfect excuse to keep up his own little walls of isolation…. enabled him to live exactly as if he were still at that little lake house, the one he had taken refuge in upon his release from Farnleigh.

Well, Max didn’t know a thing about this Bixby, but he didn’t disagree with the man’s assessment of the situation. France might have seemed an exciting lark at the time, but returning to Oxford, getting Morse settled into some sort of career, was no doubt the best thing for him.

An idle Morse was a despondent one; given too much time to think, it was breathtaking just how quickly his thoughts turned inwards, twisted all about. 

“I don’t understand it,” Morse was saying.

“What’s that?” 

“Just because someone’s, say … happy, doesn’t means they’re stupid.”

Max blinked, confused for a moment as to what he was talking about, until he realized that Morse was a bit offended at the perceived slight against Bixby, at Max’s disbelief that the man might know French.

“Sometimes I think… it’s the wiser course,” Morse said. “Just to be, to live more in the moment.”

“Thinking too much,” he added, disparagingly. “Where does it get you, really? You can have too much of a good thing.”

He looked at him then, sharply.

“Why are we talking about me, anyway?”

“And what should we talk about?” Max asked.

“Well. You know. I thought we’d talk about you.”

Max said nothing, simply took a long sip of tea.

“You seemed so calm about it, almost flip, after it was all over,” Morse observed.

“And what was I supposed to do, Morse? Fall to pieces?”

Morse shrugged, looking slightly put out, and at once, Max remembered another garden, one with a well-manicured and elaborate maze, and of how Morse had sat on an ottoman in the drawing room in Crevecoeur Hall, pale and clearly shaken, his pupils blown, his wide eyes wavering as if on the alert for a predator that might be hovering… ready to pounce… somewhere at the edges of his vision.

“No shame in it if you did,” Morse concluded, a bit testily.

And Max realized that he was remembering that day, too, that Max had touched another nerve, rankled at Morse’s not inconsiderable pride with the comment.

“It wasn’t exactly a typical day in the life of a pathologist,” Morse added.

“No,” Max allowed.

But what of that?

Why should he talk of it now? What was the point of it, really?

And therein, Max realized, lay the heart of the differences between them.

In the first year that Max had known Morse, he had been drawn to him almost at once, feeling that, at last, he had run across a man who might understand him.

They were both of them men of intellect who had found themselves required to live and work primarily amongst men of action, two men led by their brains rather than by their guts.

As the years passed, however, Max came to realize that they had less in common than he had originally thought. First and foremost, Max was a man of science, and, as such, he tended to view the world with a certain detachment, with a calm and dispassionate objectivity. Morse, too, had appeared to be much the same, but it soon became clear that his apparent aloofness and reserve was born more out of insecurity, out of a sort of form of self-defense, than out of any real sense of prudence.

On the surface, Morse seemed a reasonable enough chap, but underneath, the stream of feeling ran wide, threatening at any and every moment to overrun its carefully measured banks.

It was there, if one looked for it, just visible through the cracks in Morse’s shell: his unfortunate taste for certain German composers whom Max considered to be rather overblown, his intemperance in drink, his willingness to throw himself at anyone who gave him the slightest bit of encouragement….

… his grand gesture of running away to France with a man who was next-door to a perfect stranger, and almost certainly a fraud at best, if not some sort of petty criminal …

Max rubbed at his eyes, tiredly.

“What do you want me to say, Morse?” he asked, shortly. “That I was bloody terrified?”

“If you were. Then yes. Yes, I do.”

Max snorted.

Balderdash, really. He knew where Morse was going with this little line of inquiry all too well. 

Well. There was no need to talk about it.

The past was the past. Nothing to be done about it now.

Although, Max had to admit, he had had rather an uneasy night of it.

And that it felt good here, sitting in the clean light of morning, with Morse near at hand, across from him at the patio table. 

Doubtless, though, the chap had things to do. Had to get to some meeting at the colleges or to some tutorial. Or back to his… Bixby.

Despite himself, Max wanted to say it.

“Don’t go.”

He wanted to say it.

“Stay.”

Morse finished the last of his tea and set down his cup, and Max waited for it, the moment he would rise to go, slinking out through the garden gate much like a stray cat willing to share a few moments in the sun with a favored host before heading off on its way.

But, instead, Morse settled back in the white iron-wrought chair, looking thoroughly satisfied, as if he had just completed a particularly challenging crossword. He looked once more about the garden, his gaze thoughtful, as if he had no intention of stirring from his chair for a good long while.

“It’s a different sort of beauty a garden gets in the autumn, isn’t it?” he asked. “A bit messier … blown petals, bits of fallen leaves, dried stalks gone to seed. Doesn’t it seem to you that the flowers that blossom through October seem the brightest of all, the most vivid? It’s as if they’re the swan song of the plant, as if it knows it’s its last hurrah, and so it puts all of its energy into one concentrated burst of color. I might like it best of all, I think.”

Max glanced about his little garden. It was a bit bedraggled, it was true, but it was also true that it was all the brighter for it.

Much like Morse, really.

Then, Max realized that Morse was regarding him warily, as if wanting to brooch some forbidden topic, and Max felt himself tensing up once more, bracing for it.

“What was he like?” Morse asked.

Max frowned, confused.

“George Fancy,” Morse supplied.

Max sat back in his chair and sighed.

Well might Morse ask.

In the midst of it all, it did well to remember: that’s who it had all been for, hadn’t it? Bringing some sort of justice to bear in the case of that tragic loss of so young, so exuberant, a life?

There were many things Max might have said, but instead, he found himself casting back to the day when he had stood at the bedside of Ronald Beavis ….

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than meet the eye,” he had said.

And Fancy, after a moment of confusion, had answered brightly, “Who’s Horatio?”

At the time, he had been exasperated with the fellow.

Now he smiled at the memory.

And, amidst that moment of gentle of reminiscence, he realized how much Fancy had reminded him of another fresh-faced constable he had once known—one, for all of his classical education and thorough knowledge of Hamlet—was every bit as trying, as impulsive, as charmingly young and stupid. 

“Any chance of a lift?” the new DC had asked hopefully, in the very next breath after essentially having called him an ass.

“Actually…” Max began. “He reminded me a bit of you.”

Morse smiled, a wistful thing that somehow sent something within him unwinding, that seemed to warm him, in much the same way that sunlight strikes yellow leaves, sending them into an almost celestial glow.

****

Peter Jakes got out of the truck and slammed the door behind him, then sauntered down the sidewalk past a small line of tall, brick-front shops. The town of Claremont was a far cry from Oxford—nothing there under a hundred years old, all laid out in a single line along the main road— blink, and you would miss it. There were no grand white limestone domes or dreaming spires about, but, all the way out to the snow-capped mountains on the distant horizon, white clouds as colossal as cathedrals ascended high into clear blue skies, rolling on and on, as far as the eye could see.

Peter looked up at them, for a moment, tipping his hat so that it would not obscure his vision and squinting into the sun, and then walked on to pick up the mail.

The post office was a simple brick building with a sort of scalloped roof line, a style that seemed to be favored in towns such as this. The elderly couple who ran the place had put forth a little effort into sprucing it up a bit, placing at the doorway half-sawed barrels filled with cosmos and columbine and marigold, a wild tangle of purples and oranges too bright and too wild under the too bright, bold blue sky.

Peter pushed the door open to the familiar accompaniment of a tiny bell above the door and went inside.

“Ah. Morning, Peter,” old Mr. Clark said.

Peter nodded in greeting. They seemed to like to shorten everything out here, and, at first, it was all he could do to get people to stop calling him Pete.

He preferred that they call him Peter, the way that Hope did.

It was how he realized he was falling in love with her, the way she said his name. She said it just like she said the word _water,_ with a hard _r_ sound on the end, like she meant it.

“Looks like you got a letter,” Mr. Clark said. “From back home.”

Peter froze in his tracks, the hairs pricking up at the back of his nape.

What did he mean ‘from back home?’

“What?” he asked.

“Got it rightcheer,” the old man laughed. “All the way from merry old England.”

Mr. Clark handed over the letter covered in blue and red airmail stamps, and, as Peter looked at it, right away he felt both a startle of surprise and a shudder of relief.

He’d recognize that scrawl anywhere.

Morse.

Peter looked at the familiar writing for a moment, considering.

For Morse to have sent this letter must have meant that two things—two things that Peter would not have thought could possibly be true.

The first was, that Morse had returned to Oxford.

And, secondly, that he must have been in contact with either Strange or Thursday to have found out his address.

He looked, then, at the post mark.

Lake Silence.

Where was he staying? Not at that lake house, surely. Did the postman even stop there, at that dumpy little shack? Was he still, what? Running with that posh set?

He tore the letter open, wondering what on earth Morse could have to say to him, that he had even bothered after all of this time.

Had it been his imagination, or had Morse felt it, too, on that day he had brought him his records, when he was staying at the Thursdays’? That sense that they had come full circle together? That they were, at the end of the day, after the nightmare of Blenheim Vale and everything after, friends, of sorts?

Peter pulled open the flap of the envelope. Inside, he found a collection of savings bonds, and then…

His heart sank at the sight of it.

Six words.

_Dear Peter,_

_For the child,_

_Morse._

It looked less like a letter than an effing haiku.

If it had been anyone else, Peter might have thought it was some sort of hoax, or a joke.

But no. Only Morse would disappear completely and then show up two and a half years later, sending him such a terse little letter, just as if there weren’t volumes left unsaid between them.

What the hell had he been doing the past couple of years?

With Morse’s personal communication skills, he supposed he would never know.

Mr. Clark stuck his head solicitously over the counter.

“Not bad news, I hope.”

“No,” Peter said. “No. Just a letter from an old friend.”

Peter smiled to himself at the word, and then huffed a laugh at the realization that it really was true.

And.... perhaps it was time to go back. After all, if Morse could go back, he certainly could.

It was an odd place, Wyoming. A place that could make you feel insignificant under the depths of its skies, but which also put it all in perspective.

A place that taught you not to be afraid. 

Lately, he’d been plagued by the feeling that he had let them chase him away, that they had forced him to give up on the good things that he had found there, in Oxford, amidst the struggle. 

He was grateful—more than grateful— for all that he had now, a life he had never dreamed of, but, sometimes, he wished he could reclaim the best of what he had lost, too.

He looked down at the note one last time.

Then, he snorted.

For all of the airs Morse put on, griping about misplaced commas or rolling his eyes at a simple spelling error, his handwriting looked like crap, really. The _o_ in his so-called signature looked like a goddamned _a._

Peter made it a mental note to remember to tell him that, when he saw him.

**** one month later.... *****

Win stood in the upstairs hall, right under the pull-out steps that led up to the attic.

It would be like tearing a bandage off.

She would go up, retrieve the boxes, strew some tinsel about, and get the job done.

With Sam in Ireland, and Joan away on secondment, Christmas wouldn’t seem much like Christmas this year. But not to decorate at all, not to celebrate, seemed like an admonishment to her children, even though they might not be there to see it.

She didn’t want to be the sort of mother who made her children feel guilty for being unable to join their parents at the holiday.

_Well, don't mind us. Your father and I will just sit here in the dark and have sandwiches._

And… they needn’t, did they?

How many of Fred’s colleagues were finding themselves looking forward to a rather bleak holiday? Morse. Strange. Mr. Bright and his wife?

Did they have any plans?

Win turned and went back to the top of the stairs.

“Fred?” she called.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is doing well in these stressful times.... :/
> 
> I might not be able to post all that much from now until the end of the year, but I'd like to keep this one going--it just might be that each chapter is just one scene. I have a bit of a Bixby and Thursday twist ahead that I'd like to get to!
> 
> (I also do have a chapter of Points of Convergence that's more than half done, so I might get to post that, too! Some Morse and Fancy comic relief and a big clue in the midst of it...) 
> 
> If anyone has any requests for any bit of fluff, (since that's largely what's coming) please let me know! <3<3 I could use all the fluff I can get! XD
> 
> Thank you for reading! Wishing you all the best! <3


	5. Save

“Oh, I don’t know about a party, Win,” Thursday said. “Mr. and Mrs. Bright might want to....”

And here, Thursday hesitated. He wasn’t quite sure how to put it, in a manner in keeping with the solemnity and delicacy of the situation.

“…to have some time alone.”

How else _to_ phrase it, really? He could hardly come out and say that this might very likely be the last Christmas the Brights would get to spend together as husband and wife.

But Win was standing before his armchair, her feet planted like a soldier’s in the center of the living room carpet, looking utterly unconvinced.

“That’s what everyone said when Dad was so ill. Don’t you remember? How many of Mum’s friends seemed to pull back, to pull away?”

Thursday said nothing.

“It’s one evening, Fred. It might do them some good, to know they don’t have to be alone now. Might make Mrs. Bright feel better, knowing her husband has friends who care, who will be there for him after she’s….”

And then, it was Win’s turn to hesitate.

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said. “All right, then. I’ll ask him. But I think Strange might have his mother in town. His brother’s in the Army, you know. Off in Germany.”

“Then invite her, too. And what about Dr. DeBryn? That pathologist you mention now and again? It’s been a rough year for everyone.”

Thursday grimaced. 

It felt as if she was digging him in deeper and deeper.

He hardly ever spoke to the doctor outside of work. When would he ever have the opportunity to ask him? At the mortuary? As they were standing over a body at a scene of crime?

_“By the way, doctor, my wife would like to have you over Christmas Eve for a bit of caroling and sherry.”_

Christ.

“Well,” Win said. “At the very least you’ll invite Morse, of course. The number of times he’s been through our door? No need to stand on ceremony with him, is there?”

Thursday cleared his throat.

Morse.

If only Win knew the half of it.

Morse would be the most difficult of all to bring himself to ask. 

And besides….

“Morse might be …” Thursday began.

And, again, what was he supposed to say?

That Morse would most likely be spending the holiday with his ….

... whatever the hell Bixby was, exactly?

“Busy,” Thursday finished, lamely.

But Win went on, undeterred.

“Does this have anything to do with the man who came to the door that day? He was the one Morse left for France with, wasn’t it? When he sent that letter to Sam?”

Thursday heaved a sigh. He had always tried to be discreet about the whole thing, for Morse’s sake.

Not to mention the fact that any hint of speculation in regard to Morse and Bixby’s relationship hardly constituted any sort of conversation he’d ever envisioned having with his wife.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, invite him, too. The poor thing. He sounded absolutely shattered. Why on earth did Morse come home with you that day? Why didn’t Morse tell him where he was?”

Thursday shifted in his chair. He never thought he’d live to hear the likes of cunning Joss Bixby referred to as “that poor thing,” but ... alright.

It was all as awkward as an uneven step.

But he should have known, as soon as Win began to air the idea of this party, that nothing would dissuade her from her goal of bringing everyone together for the holidays.

No matter how uncomfortable it might prove for all involved.

“Morse thought he was still in London,” Thursday replied. “I don’t think Morse told him much about the case, to be honest.”

Win made a sour face at that, and Thursday felt his pulse quicken.

He shouldn’t have mentioned that last; any hint of keeping such secrets couldn’t help but remind her of…

Just then, there was a scuffle of dropped papers emanating from the hall.

“That will be the post,” Thursday said, hopping up from his chair as if he might suddenly be expecting a most important letter.

Anything to change the subject.

He padded down the carpeted hallway, stooping to pick up the post where it had landed on the floor before the front door, but it was no use; Win was still following him, her arms crossed, as if she knew he was putting her off.

“Fred? What’s this?” she asked, nodding to the letters in his hand.

He followed her gaze only to notice that, amidst the bills, was an airmail envelope edged with stripes of red and blue.

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s from Sergeant Jakes.” 

“Oh?” she asked.

He tore the letter open, his curiosity temporarily eclipsing all thoughts of the party, and began to read. 

“Everyone’s doing well,” he said.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Win said.

“Hmmmm. Seems Morse sent him a letter.”

“Really? Doesn’t sound much like our Morse, does it?”

Thursday winced at her use of the possessive pronoun.

That was just the trouble, wasn’t it? Win was a bit in the dark, a bit behind the times, when it came to Morse. She was still envisioning him as the young DC who had once hovered around their dining room table, trying his best to blend in with the wallpaper….

… whereas Thursday wasn’t quite so sure “our Morse” was an apt designation any longer.

If it truly ever had been. 

He turned his attention back to the letter, then, his eyes scanning over the sprawling script. Jakes’ handwriting, while still familiar, had changed, grown bolder over the passing years, was far larger and loopier than the cramped scrawl that Thursday had once been wont to see at the bottom of his sergeant’s reports.

It was the handwriting of a man thoroughly at ease of himself.

The West must have suited him, then.

Or perhaps it was his new-found role as a husband and father. 

He knew that Jakes had worried on that score; right before the lad had left for the States, he had confided in him in a way in which he previously never would have imagined.

Thursday had tried to tell him it would all come in time, what he needed, when he needed it.

We’re never ready, are we? For a change that big.

Thursday could still remember how he had fretted so the first time he had held Joan. She had seemed so small ... even though Win, sitting up in the hospital bed, had heartily assured him otherwise. 

And he had learned, by and by, had learned to be what Joan—and then Sam—needed him to be. Grew into his new role right along with the kids. He had been sure that, with Jakes, it would be the same way.

And Jakes’ words now confirmed it. It seemed all was well and good with his little family—that he was writing to him primarily because his interest had been piqued by Morse’s letter.

Thursday snorted.

Could hardly blame the man, seeing as Morse had taken the time to write to him and then left him with all of six words. 

“Looks like Morse didn’t tell him much.”

Told him absolutely nothing to be precise.

Well.

That was Morse all over for you.

“He’s wondering how everyone has been doing. He’s….”

“Fred?”

“He’s coming in in a fortnight. Back to Oxford. Bringing the family for a visit.”

Win clapped her hands together, absolutely beaming with the news.

“Oh. Now we _have_ to throw a party,” she said. “We have to give them a proper welcome, don’t we?”

Thursday heard the message clear, there in her inflection, in the way her voice had landed on the penultimate syllable, rendering her words not so much a question .... as a decree.

The party was going to happen, one way or another.

Best to get on with it.

***

Well.

What else could he do?

It would all be a part of his penance.

As painful as it was, if he didn’t at least make an effort, he was convinced that Win would know.

Mr. Bright was the first he approached with the idea. Wasn’t too bad, really. He had grown closer to the man, these past few months. During his troubles with Win, the old chief superintendent had been the only one in his life who could fully understand just how much he stood to lose.

No.

Just how much he had lost.

That afternoon, as he had sat with Mr. Bright in two plastic chairs before the vending machines, he found he didn’t have to say much. For years, Thursday had heard the warnings about his blood pressure, had heard Strange refer to him as “the old man” too many times to count, but he hadn’t _truly_ felt old until that day, when he was left an empty shell of himself, with only the memory of a girl who was slipping out of his life, a girl who, without his realizing it, had _become_ his life, to the point that, without her, his heart felt like nothing more than a blown and brittle husk.

He had murmured words laced with loss and nostalgia, with past joy and present grief, and Mr. Bright had picked up the strain as if they—two men of two different worlds—were telling the selfsame story.

_And she said, “Have you come to save me?”_

_And I said, “Yes. I rather think I have.”_

Nevertheless, when Thursday entered Mr. Bright’s new office at Castle Gate to ask him about Win’s party, he had thought that the man might look away, offer some excuse. And yet, it proved to be quite the opposite. Instead, the older man seemed touched, even to the point that there was a telltale tremble in his voice.

“That’s very kind. Very kind, indeed.”

The heaviness in his voice as he spoke the words, almost like a sigh, left Thursday with yet another wash of guilt.

Thursday was the one extending the invitation, but it had all been Win’s idea. He, in fact, had lobbied against this party from the get-go.

And now, the weary man was looking at him with an open gratitude he hardly felt he deserved. 

“Yeah, well,” Thursday said. “We’ve had a rough patch, of late. Win’s got her heart set on this. And what with the kids not coming home…..it would mean the world to us… ”

And then he rambled on and on in such a vein so as to make it to seem as if Mr. Bright was doing him a favor.

Which, in a way, he was.

After that, asking Strange was a piece of cake.

“Ah, will there be caroling, then? I’ll bring my trombone.”

Thursday wasn’t sure how that would go over with Morse, but....

Who bloody well cared about that, at this point?

And then, much to Thursday’s surprise, Dr. DeBryn, too, seemed delighted by the idea.

At first, Thursday gathered that perhaps DeBryn was glad to have an excuse to sidestep spending too much time with his own family; his mother, he confided, was eager to set him up with a friend’s daughter, something the doctor seemed rather keen to avoid.

But then, as the doctor spoke on, Thursday realized, much to his dismay, that DeBryn was quite looking forward to the party—not just as a gathering of old friends, as a chance to catch up with former colleagues—but as an amusing spectacle, as if the modest little get-together might prove quite the show, one not to be missed.

And how could it not be? What with Strange and his mother, Bixby and Morse, Mr. and Mrs. Bright, Dr. DeBryn, and the Jakes family of Claremont, Wyoming, all in the same handful of rooms?

What in the name of heaven and earth did any of them have in common, really, besides a passing, working acquaintance?

He’d just have to start drinking early. 

Like right now, maybe.

Might need a stiff one before asking Morse.

He, more than anyone, Win had her heart set on attending this disaster.

Well Thursday knew of Morse’s exacting standards. He still wasn’t quite sure, in the aftermath of Wicklesham Quarry, if Morse had fully forgiven him or not. He could hang on to things, Morse.

Every day Thursday meant to drop by the colleges to ask him, but every day he put it off, finding some excuse or another.

He drug his feet for so long, in fact, that— through a turn of events that he never saw coming—he ended up, strangely enough, broaching the subject with Bixby instead.

Because, early one evening, just as Thursday was leaving the nick, shutting off the lights in the cool and modern offices, Bixby rang him on the office telephone. 

“I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” Thursday asked.

“About matters to which you might want to attend.”

Thursday said nothing. It was all rather enigmatic, almost ominous, really.

“Alright,” Thursday said. “When would you like to meet?”

“What are you doing right now?”

***

Thursday pushed open the heavy door of the Lamb and Flag and was greeted at once by a rush of warm and heavy air, generated as much, it seemed, by the crush of patrons as by the roaring fire that danced behind the hearth, bathing the whole place—from the glasses hung upside-down along the bar to the gleaming dark wood-paneled walls—in a dim orange glow.

He made his way through the clutter of tables, through the forest of knees jutting out at odd angles and wool coats draped over the backs of chairs, to a table in a corner where Bixby sat alone, an untouched pint before him, his smooth face utterly inscrutable in the low, flickering light.

“Bixby,” Thursday said with a nod, scraping a chair across the rough floor and then settling down into it. As soon as he took his place, he found that his usual order of a pint of dark ale was already there, waiting for him.

“How did you know?” Thursday asked.

But the moment the question fell from his lips, Thursday felt that he knew the answer all too well.

It was Bixby’s business to know, wasn’t it?

That had been the point, after all, of all of those parties on Lake Silence—to give people what it was they wanted, to give them a good time. Joss Bixby made it his business to know each man’s preferences and proclivities, each man’s weaknesses and vices, so as to indulge them with them on one night and then to hold them over their heads on the next.

And now, as he sat here before the man in the eerie light cast by the fire, the pint felt like some ill-omen, as if he were the next happy victim getting into Bixby’s queue.

He thought that Bixby might smile his Cheshire cat smile, murmur some pithy remark.

But instead, the man simply shrugged.

“You bought Endeavour his first beer. And it’s what he drinks. So. Et voila, old man.”

Thursday grimaced. Perhaps he had been a little too mistrustful, then, reading so much into a simple pint.

Nevertheless, it was a strange feeling—an incongruous mix of the familiar and unfamiliar—to hear tell of what had been a private, almost intimate, moment between himself and Morse aired out into the night by a relative stranger …. Not to mention hearing Morse referred to as “Endeavour,” all in a single breath.

He shifted a bit in his seat, feeling a little exposed.

Of, course, it was likely that it was Bixby’s intention to make him feel so, to make him feel off-guard; it was his subtle way of letting Thursday know that he had the measure of him, whereas .... what did he know of Bixby?

Well.

And then, Thursday had to repress a snort.

Thanks to Morse’s late bout of drunken effusiveness, quite a lot maybe. More than Bixby might imagine, anyway.

“So,” Thursday ventured, “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” Bixby said. “I’ve happened to run across something that might be of interest to you.”

And then he slid an envelope to him across the table.

Thursday’s heart sank. So that’s what he was about, was it? That’s what Morse, of all people, had gotten himself into, was it?

He snatched the envelope up with an easy sweep of his broad hand and glowered at the man, making his feelings clear. He certainly hadn’t gone through hell and back just to make another deal with the devil.

“I don’t know what idea you’ve got, but…” Thursday rumbled.

“I’m not sure what idea you’ve got either, old man,” Bixby countered, the quirk of a bemused smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “But you might be interested in that.”

Thursday cast him a final dark look and then opened the envelope, dreading what he might find within.

Only to see his own handwriting, right there before him, looking back at him.

It was the cheque. The one he had written out to Charlie.

“Where did you get this?” Thursday asked, stowing it away in his pocket, whisking the thing out of sight.

And again, Bixby only shrugged.

“What?” Thursday pressed. “Someone sold this to you, then? And you bought it with the idea that it might come in handy, having a copper in your back pocket?”

“If I thought that, why on earth would I hand it over to you?” Bixby replied, the barest trace of offense in his voice. “I’m giving it to you so that you know you’re off the hook. You don’t need to worry that it’s floating around out there, anymore. A fresh start, old man. Happy Christmas.”

Thursday frowned. A man didn’t get to where Bixby was by doing things out of the goodness of his heart. There had to be payback, something in it for him somewhere.

And, dimly, Thursday thought he saw just what that might be.

“So. What, then? You give this to me, and I owe you one. Is that the game? You give this to me, and I’m not to get Morse involved in any more cases. Well, you’re wasting your time there. And, just so you know, it wasn’t me who told Morse all, any road.”

It was true that it was he who had first hooked Morse in on the Osbert Page case, what with that jaunt out to the Bodleian, what with that enigmatic map—but it certainly wasn’t he who had let Morse in on the more crucial details.

Not bloody likely, when he had been kept in the dark himself.

Strange, it seemed, had told Morse far more than Thursday ever would have dreamed of: it was Strange who had told Morse about the body found in the foundations of Cranmer House, Strange who had told Morse of Clive Burkitt, Strange who had told Morse about the involvement of the Masons.

Strange who had filled Morse in on all.

To his shame. 

His former sergeant had been forced to turn to a Greats don because he couldn’t trust anyone from his old nick.

Thursday thought that Bixby might look somber, or even glare at him with daggers in his dark eyes at Thursday’s refusal to go along with his little bargain, but instead, he was laughing.

“You only wish I were that stupid,” Bixby said. “If Endeavour found out I tried something like that…”

And then he let the words drop away, as if he didn’t want to consider what his fate in such a circumstance might be.

“And even if we don’t agree on much,” Bixby said, “we’d have to agree, I think, that he _would_ find out.”

And the man was right, there. On that they could agree. 

“Truth will out,” Thursday said, heavily. 

A fact that he had learned the hard way. 

Bixby nodded, then, towards the pocket where he had stowed the envelope.

“Charles Thursday,” he said, as if the name were as good as an explanation. 

“My brother,” Thursday replied.

Bixby nodded again, as if he understood, as if he need say no more.

“Have you spoken to him since?”

“No. And...”

And, for the first time, the full realization hit him, in such a way that was its own separate old and worn sorrow.

“Not ever likely to, either. Not for some time, anyway.” 

All of those memories, of playing football in the street, of crawling in through the window of the Mile End Rivoli of a Saturday morning, of happy Christmas mornings, sitting under the tree with Chas and Billy, all were gone now, utterly eclipsed….

Because what was there left between them, after such a betrayal? Even if Thursday forgave him, which, he supposed, he had in his way, the weight of it would always be there, falling between them. 

Much like.... 

“Does Morse know about…?” Thursday began. 

“Yes.”

“Right,” he said. “Right.” 

Thursday mulled that over for a moment. Even now, even after all that had happened, there was still a part of him wished that Morse knew nothing about it, that there was still someone out there who might hold some sliver of illusion about him.

Although, maybe Morse had seen right through him, saw some of his bluster for what it was, all along, right from the very beginning. He had looked up to him, it was true. But not so much that he felt that he needed to stand on ceremony with him—no, not since their very first meeting.

“So what is it, brown-nosing or sucker for punishment? There’s no other kind of bloody fool still in the office at this time of night,” he had pronounced. 

And the young DC, one of the nameless hordes sent over from Carshall-Newton, looked up from his work. 

“Just us.”

Thursday huffed a laugh at the memory, softly under his breath.

No. It was all for the best. Morse knew, then, the truth of it—that he had begun with the best of intentions, that he had only meant to help his brother. And he had forgiven him for it.

“So why are you doing this?” Thursday asked.

“I simply happened to be in the right place at the right time. Peace offering, if you’d like. Thought it might serve to bring a bit of _balance_ to your life, perhaps.”

And there they were.

Thursday didn’t miss it, the emphasis he had placed on the phrase.

_A bit of balance._

He’d been a loose cannon of late, sending off shot hither and yon—the shock waves of which had careened through his own life, to Morse’s, all the way to reach Bixby’s.

So.

This was Bixby’s way of stowing away the powder, then.

Well. Fair enough. He wasn’t wrong there. 

Thursday took a sip of his pint, and then Bixby followed suit. A gesture that felt like the beginnings of a truce.

“Well,” Thursday said. “I daresay you’re right. I’d no business getting Morse in through the door of any of that. Especially after…”

And then Thursday let the sentence fall away. Bixby might know about those pints he and Morse had shared long ago in the pub garden, but Thursday wasn’t sure what he knew about Morse’s previous run-in with the Masons, about that night at Blenheim Vale.

“I had a mad half hour,” Thursday said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Bixby said. “Don’t go trying to get me into trouble, old man.”

Bixby frowned, then, tracing the rim of his glass meditatively.

“He … he enjoyed it, actually. Endeavour. The puzzle of it. The sense of purpose.”

“Yeah. Well,” Thursday replied. “He was a good detective.”

There was a pang there, somewhere in his chest; he would never get accustomed to it, saying those words in the past tense.

“We all need something like that, I suppose,” Bixby said. “Some degree of risk in our lives, some thrill of danger to make us feel alive.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said.

“I have my hydroplane, and Endeavour has…”

And here, Bixby’s mask seemed to falter, as his face contorted in a struggle after the right words.

Then, he smiled.

“... And Endeavour has getting the goods on corrupt city planners and confronting them at quarries.”

Thursday huffed a laugh.

“Everyone needs a hobby," he said. “I’ve been keeping canaries, myself.”

Bixby looked slightly startled at that, but then he laughed appreciatively and raised his glass.

Thursday, too, took another drink, a longer one this time, a draught of dark ale that went down easier than any he had savored in quite some time.

Then he set his glass down on the table.

“My wife, Win,” Thursday said, “is planning a little party on Christmas Eve.....” 

****

Bixby was standing over the kitchen sink, trying his damnedest to clean off the dollops of thick custard that seemed to cling like glue to the whisks of the electric beater, licking the pie filling from his fingers in a slightly frantic effort to cover his tracks, when Endeavour came slouching into the kitchen. 

Bixby startled at the sound of his footsteps. He had thought it a fairly small chance that Endeavour might wander down here, to a part of the house he so rarely frequented, but now Bixby turned on the spot, trying to block the mess of mixing bowls in the sink from his view.

And then….

“What the hell are you wearing?” Bixby asked.

As much as Endeavour’s sudden appearance in the doorway had caught Bix off-guard, there was nothing in either this world or the next that could have prepared him for that shirt….

Bixby had never seen the likes of it, outside of a television programme. It was made of black silk overlaid with two cream silk inserts, each of which started at the seam of one of Endeavour’s shoulders and then traced down along either side of his chest, forming twin scalloped panels. And, as if the color-blocking didn’t make for a busy enough effect, both of the cream panels sported cut-outs that revealed the black silk underneath, each in the shape of a horned bull’s head.

It was the sort of shirt you might expect to see on the daredevil star of a Wild West rodeo—not what you’d find on an academic going to a quiet Christmas party in Oxford. 

Endeavour looked down at his shirt, pulling up a bit of the silk with his thumb and forefinger, as if to examine it more closely.

“I want to make Jakes feel at home,” he said. 

Bixby huffed a laugh.

“They don’t _actually_ go about wearing clothes like that in Wyoming. You know that, don’t you?”

“What do you know of it?” Endeavour replied, tartly. “Mississippi is more than a thousand miles from Wyoming.”

“Yes,” Bixby conceded. “But have you ever seen me go about in a vest for a shirt, with a leaf of grass between my teeth?”

“No,” Endeavour replied. “But it might be a good look on you.”

And then, there it was.

Just barely discernable, but there all the same.

That quirk of a smile playing just at the corner of his mouth. 

Endeavour might not seem as if he had a sense of humor.

But he did have one.

You just had to … look for it.

Lately, Bix had been learning of Endeavour’s onetime rivalry with Peter Jakes.

The shirt was a joke, then: his way of having a go at his former colleague.

“Ha ha, old man,” Bixby said.

Endeavour’s smile deepened, making him to look slightly daft—that rarest of all expressions to grace his expressive face—and then he slid around the door frame, stalking further into the kitchen.

“What’s this?” he asked. “Something smells good in here.”

“Ah,” Bixby said. “Well. That would be a pie.”

Endeavour stopped dead in his tracks.

“You bake? Since when?”

“No. I don’t _bake,_ exactly. I simply … It wasn’t…. ”

Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what had possessed him to make the thing, really. Now that he stood here caught, _in flagrante delicto,_ so to speak, he found that he had rarely ever felt so ridiculous .... so exposed.

He could almost feel it, the twitch in his fingers, as if the tips of them longed for the feel of the black satin of a masquerade mask.

Although little wonder, really, that he should grow nostalgic, yearn for the days of the parties he had thrown back in the summer of ‘67.

After all, it was far easier to stand in an elegant evening suit, greeting hordes of guests whom he did not know, than it would be to make small talk in a crucible of a narrow semidetached in Iffey with a dozen other people.

Bixby had always loved large parties. They were so intimate.

At small parties, there isn’t any privacy.

Endeavour was moving towards the oven, and desperately, Bixby willed his feet to move so as to block his path—willed himself to say _something,_ something cavalier or self-depreciating, before Endeavour could say it for him, to mutter some excuse.

_“It’s not much.”_

_“It’s not ready yet.”_

Anything but to stand there under Endeavour’s gaze, his heart on his sleeve, his idiocy on full display, right along with the pie sitting on the oven’s center rack.

But, already, it was too late. Endeavour was crossing the tiled kitchen floor, flipping on the oven light and stooping to look in through the glass window.

Then, he furrowed his brow, leaving Bix with a yet another cold plunge of self-doubt.

“Doesn’t it look good, old man?” Bix asked, lightly, as if it were all a joke, just as much as Endeavour’s ridiculous shirt.

“Yes,” Endeavour said, reluctantly. “I suppose. I just didn’t realize a pie could be so …”

“So what?”

“So… _orange.”_

“It’s sweet potato,” Bix explained.

 _“Sweet potato?”_ Endeavour asked. "Sweet potato _pie?_ ” 

“Yes. Why. What is it, old man?”

“I dunno,” Endeavour said. “Should vegetables and puddings mix?”

“Sweet potato isn’t a vegetable. It’s a starch.”

“Hmmmmm. It looks …”

He was going to say it. Bixby wasn’t sure _what,_ exactly, but something, something derogatory.

Rather not his speed?

Too homey and inelegant?

Too … backwater?

And, all along, even as he was making the blasted thing, he had known what a terrible idea it was. How his bringing something so incongruous might render a tear in his carefully-crafted façade a mile wide.

But, for some reason, he had just … _wanted_ it.

He had been the glittering host of countless parties—of parties wild with roving lights and the spin of restless dancing, but it had been a long time since he had been to a party like this one.

To an actual family Christmas. To a party of fond laughter, of old songs, and of simple desserts that carried the scent of nutmeg and of cinnamon...

And of home.

Such as it was. Such as it had been.

Such as it might be again.

Bix looked over Endeavour’s shoulder, considering the pie as it sat under the harsh light of the electric oven bulb, and suddenly, it seemed an innocent enough concoction, its smooth surface revealing nothing of the burst of rich and heavy sweetness underneath.

It wasn’t too over-the-top, really.

It was simple, simple.

Anyway, the thing looked much more sophisticated than banana pudding, which had been his first impulse to make.

Perhaps he could get away with it.

“I’ll say it’s Italian,” Bixby invented wildly. 

“No,” Endeavour replied. “No one’s going to believe that’s Italian.”

“Slovenian, then.”

_“Slovenian?”_

“Albanian, then. No one knows all that much about Albanian cuisine.”

Endeavour turned to look at him, then, a wondering expression on his face, and at once Bixby saw it: the trace of the DC Morse that he hadn’t ever truly known. It was as if he was on the case, as if Bix were a puzzle he was eager to work out.

It was an expression that Bixby was always keen to avoid, at all costs.

“What?” he asked. “For all anyone knows, I might very well have an Albanian great-grandmother. And it’s not as if I planning to embellish it with pecans and little marshmallows.”

“You mean there’s usually even more to it?” Endeavour asked.

“I didn’t comment on that shirt.”

“Yes, you did.”

Bixby scowled. That was hardly the point.

But that was Endeavour all over for you.

Always so coolly logical whenever one tried to brook an argument. 

Damned infuriating, really.

Bixby took a deep breath. As they would say: in for a penny, in for a pound. 

“I just thought it would be nice. I… It’s like you said… that day in the car, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s time we settled somewhere. I know these people are important to you, and…”

He let the words fall away.

Because what he was going to say was, _“and I just… wanted them to like me.”_

He was pathetic, really. 

Endeavour was searching his face, his overlarge eyes thoughtful, and Bixby struggled to maintain his gaze. 

“You’re not worried… someone might ever figure it out?” Endeavour asked.

“I don’t know,” Bixby said. “Would it be so terrible, if one or the other of them knew a little of the truth of me? I don’t have to tell them. I could. You know. Like you said. Just leave them to figure it out. Even if someone were to guess, say, the general region from which I hail, they'd have no way of ever guessing the exact place.” 

He huffed a bit of a rueful laugh, again, making it to seem as if it were all a matter of no importance.

“After all, old man. It’s not as if they’d know to ring up the Lafayette County sheriff’s office, to check up on me.”

A flicker of uncertainty moved across Endeavour’s face.

“Well, would they?” Bix persisted.

“Endeavour?”

“Nooo,” Endeavour said, slowly. 

“Besides,” Bixby said, “now that I’ve seen first-hand how your old Cowley firm operates, I’m not so sure they wouldn’t be on my side.” 

Endeavour scowled a little at that; it had gone against his grain, Bix knew, the way the case had been handled.

But then, Endeavour shrugged one shoulder and smiled.

“If you’re not worried about it.... then, why not? It’s not as if we aren’t just leaving them to figure out ... everything else as well.”

And Bixby felt another cold plunge of doubt.

There was no way the evening could prove to be anything but a disaster.

It wouldn’t work. It would never work.

What were they say to the Brights? To Strange’s mother? How would he even be introduced? As Morse’s “friend?”

Just two lonely bachelors making the best of the holiday together. Nothing to see here, folks.

Would anyone believe that?

Especially if they were to show up bearing a cozy dessert in a glass dish?

What gave off an aura of domesticity more than a homemade pie?

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with his past, the truth of him he wanted them to know. But rather the greater truth of his present. 

And ...

What was he doing? 

Was he.... 

Oh, god.

He was meeting the in-laws, wasn’t he? 

“I’m sure it’s a very good pie,” Endeavour said. “Once you’ve gotten. Oh. You know. Accustomed to the fact that it’s orange.”

Bixby smiled at the jest, but Endeavour’s face was solemn.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Endeavour said.

His words and his eyes were full of light, but his voice had fallen to the low and husky hush of a field covered with snow, that odd note he struck sometimes that made him to sound at once both older and younger than he really was.

And from the tenor of that note, Bixby understood that he wasn’t talking about the pie.

Before Bixby knew what was happening, Endeavour was moving forward, stepping closer, pushing him up against the counter and then leaning in for a kiss.

A kiss that tasted cinnamon sweet, with just a daring hint of clove.

A kiss that felt just as much like coming home as a smooth and soft and easy warm custard pie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Bixby Jordan Baker's line, but I think in this case, Bixby would agree!
> 
> Also, Endeavour's shirt is inspired by a photo I saw of Shaun Evans from the movie "Telstar." 
> 
> I don't think I'll get to the party in time for Christmas, but I do have some scenes with Jakes and Morse and with Bixby and Mrs. Strange planned. Also, Strange and Morse will do a musical number or two... but I don't think that will happen until the wee hours of the morning...
> 
> Maybe around Christmas, I'll just post whatever part I have, and split it up a bit.... :0)
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope everyone is well! <3


	6. Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The character of Mrs. Strange is inspired by EAU1636's fun and sweet fic "Jimmy's Birthday Surprise." Thanks for the inspiration! <3

All that day, Win had been busy. She’d set out her best holiday tablecloth—brilliant white with a bold graphic border of red old-fashioned sleighs brimming with emerald leaves of holly; she’d festooned glittering strands of red and gold garland around the paintings in the living room and all along the stairwell banister; she’d placed a trio of ceramic angels on the mantel amidst a bedding of blinking, colored lights—in short, she had gone about making the little house sparkle, thoroughly festive in a manner the likes of which Mrs. Bright and Joss Bixby had most likely never seen.

Soon after the first guests had arrived, however, Thursday began to relax a little; perhaps the party needn’t be the disaster he had anticipated. Sitting around the living room with Jim Strange and Dr. DeBryn, his hand cupped around a sweet and bracing and ice-cold glass of Scotch, wasn’t all that different from making small talk with them down at the nick, really.

Wasn’t all that bad.

And he hadn’t done all that badly, either, if he did say so himself. 

He cast a glance over to the far wall of the living room, over to where an upright piano stood, its dark wood gleaming in the flashing pink and blue and green lights of the nearby tinsel-strewn Christmas tree, and felt a surge of quiet and satisfied pride. 

He had gotten the piano second-hand, as an early Christmas present for Win. It was nice. Classy, but not too flashy.

A far better idea than that oven, anyway.

Or the pair of canaries—who had since passed solely into his keeping—for that matter.

The conversation in the living room was relaxed and easy—revolving around work, in the main, before moving on to fishing. Strange was just asking DeBryn about a trip to the River Tay he was planning for the spring, when, suddenly, a peal of bright and bubbling laughter rang out from the kitchen.

Jim Strange turned to him, then, the question clear in his earnest face, as if to ask what Win and his mother—who seemed to have become fast friends at once—might be on about.

But Thursday only grimaced.

Long experience had taught him it was quite likely that the source of their laughter might very well involve some story or another about either one of them. 

Just then, the doorbell rang, and Thursday rose from out of his chair, sauntering out into the hallway just in time to nearly collide with Win, who was brushing past him in a swish of a red party dress towards the front door.

She flashed him a bright smile, one made all the brighter by a glass or two of sherry, and then she opened the door wide, letting in a burst of fresh cold air, so that they might greet their guests together. On the threshold, Mr. Bright stood next to his wife, looking quite different from his usual workday self, far less imposing, dressed in a green jumper and white shirt.

And … could it be possible that, even after all of these years, he had never once seen the man out of uniform?

“It was so kind of you to invite Reginald and me,” Mrs. Bright said.

“Of course,” Win chirped. “We’re so very glad you could make it.”

Win stepped back, then, instinctively, as if to allow the older woman room, as if she didn’t want to crowd her.

And well might she feel that way: there was something ethereal about her, Mrs. Bright, something fragile in her frosty blonde and glimmering beauty, so unlike Win’s brisk and beaming glow and her merry, sherry-bright eyes.

“Won’t you come in?” Win asked. “May I get you something to drink?”

They helped their guests with their coats, and then Win whisked off to the kitchen for a gin and a hot cup of tea, leaving Thursday to guide the Brights back into the living room.

As soon as they stepped into the festive and festooned little room, Thursday found it was just as he had imagined: Mrs. Bright stood blinking amidst the blinking lights for a moment, as if she had entered some alien land.

And of course, she would. She was the sort who had been off to flower arranging class with other ladies of her social standing, while Win had been making sandwiches to save him the cost of lunch at the pub. The sort who had time for courses in watercolors and for charity banquets, for whom dinners at Chez Andre were a weekly occurrence, rather than an anniversary treat.

She smiled, though, just the same, as if she found everything most satisfactory, and it was touching, really, the way Mr. Bright settled her on the couch, just as if she were a china doll that might break, swaddling an oversized cashmere scarf around her.

“I’m feeling stronger every day,” she announced, raising her chin.

“Carrie’s been seeing a faith healer,” Mr. Bright murmured, keeping his eyes trained on a flower on the blue carpet. 

She looked about at each of them, then, with an odd sort of intensity.

“It’s all about the power of the mind, the power of healing. You have to have faith. Do you believe?”

DeBryn, diplomatically, toyed with his glass, but said nothing, whereas Jim Strange sat back in his chair and answered staunchly, “Well. I’ve always been C of E, myself.”

Bless the lad.

They were all C of E, nominally.

But somehow Thursday had gathered that what denomination they might fill in on a pink official form was hardly the question that Mrs. Bright was posing.

One’s faith, or lack thereof, as the case may be, he supposed, might not be the most unsuitable subject in light of the season, but, still, Thursday couldn’t help but thank God when Win came in carrying a tray with a round of drinks for all.

“It’s so good to get out,” Mrs. Bright beamed at her.

“I’m so glad.”

“Do you play?” she asked, with a nod to the piano.

“Yes,” Win said. “Or I did, when I was a girl in school. Haven’t had much chance to practice. I just got it as a Christmas gift, actually. From Fred.”

“Lovely.”

And then Mrs. Bright smiled, and Win smiled, and everyone smiled, and everyone was getting on smashingly. 

It wasn’t so bad, really.

So why should Thursday feel as if he were still waiting for the axe to drop?

The answer to that was simple enough, he supposed.

Because it hadn’t yet.

****

“Mrs. Thursday,” Morse said, in his old low and mournful voice. It was a tone that Thursday hadn’t heard Morse strike in quite some time, but a familiar one, all the same, filling him with a nostalgic sense of déjà vu. 

It also led him to realize that it was little wonder, really, that Win should be so far behind the curve when it came to Morse. From the way Morse came shuffling into the narrow hall, gawky as hell, Thursday could see at once that—don or no don— in Win’s presence, anyway, he was just as he had always been: as bashful and as tractable as a schoolboy. When she pulled his lanky form into a swift embrace, he all but went wooden in her arms, before finally managing to give her a stiff-armed and dutiful pat on the back.

“Hello, Morse, dear,” she said. 

She released a tottering Morse from her grasp and stepped back lightly on her heel, turning to Bixby….

“And you must be ….?”

“Bixby. My friends call me Bix,” Bixby chimed in, juggling a dessert dish he had been carrying so as to take Win’s offered hand. He gathered only the tips of her fingers into his palm in a gentlemanly little gesture, as though Win were a great lady, and then he relaxed into a suave smile that reached his eyes, so that Win seemed to swim in the highlights there, causing her—did Thursday imagine it?—to go a little pink.

She cleared her throat and nodded to the dish in his hand, all back to business, despite the flush along her cheekbones.

“Oh? What’s this?” she asked.

“Ah,” Bixby said. “It’s a pie.”

“Oh, how thoughtful of you,” she said, but then, as she turned to Thursday, she cast him an uncertain look, and right away, Thursday could see why. 

It was orange.

Pumpkin, maybe?

Win took the glass dish from Bixby’s hands, then, freeing him up so that he could take off his black wool coat, while Morse shrugged himself gracelessly out of his own thinner, beige one.

Just as it was with Mr. Bright, it was odd, witnessing the transformation that a change of clothes could bestow upon a man. Thursday had only very rarely seen Bixby in anything other than an evening suit, but, as he hung up his coat, he seemed to be an altogether different person standing in their little well-lit hallway than the grand figure he liked to cut out at Lake Silence, dressed casually enough in a white Oxford shirt and stylish red silk tie.

Whereas Morse was wearing ….

And there it was.

He _knew_ it.

He ruddy well _knew_ it.

All right.

So this was how it was going to be, was it?

“We weren’t planning on having any bull-riding contests tonight, Morse,” Thursday said, dryly.

Morse looked at him wide-eyed, the picture of all innocence.

“I just want to make Jakes feel welcome.”

“Hmmm,” Thursday rumbled.

Just didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have a go at him, more likely.

If any help was to come to Thursday tonight, in skating over any rough patches of ice, it certainly wouldn’t be coming from Morse’s quarter.

Eh, buggar it.

“Well, don’t stand on ceremony. Come in,” Win said, a bell-like laugh in her voice. It was as if she could sense his irritation, and was eager to make up for it.

She whisked them off into the kitchen, carrying Bixby’s orange pie before her, and then, before Thursday even had the chance to return to their guests in the living room, a burst of delighted girlish giggling rang out from the end of the hall.

Thursday rolled his eyes.

He highly doubted that Morse was capable of saying anything that might draw forth from the two women such a sound.

Bixby was already right at home, then.

The only trouble was… how was Win to tell Enid Strange that their charming guest was already spoken for?

****

Enid Strange had never met Morse before, but she had heard enough stories about him over the years, that, at some point along the way, she had come to think of them as “Morse stories.”

_And then Morse said, “Venerable, the Bede might have been, but not clairvoyant.”_

_And then Morse said, “Not one of whom was wearing a wedding ring,” and they all stood around with their mouths hanging open, like they were having a contest to see who would be the first to catch a fly._

So when Win Thursday led two young men into the kitchen, one with a gracious smile and the other with an uncertain expression on his slightly haughty and austere face…

“Ah,” Enid said. “You must be Morse.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes.” 

“Enid Strange. Jimmy’s told me so much about you.”

“I can just imagine,” the other man said, wryly, causing Morse to cast him a dark look.

“All nice things, of course,” Enid hastened to assure him.

And it was true, really. Even though Jimmy had freely admitted that he could be a right pain in the arse at times, Morse, he was clearly fond of him, all the same. 

“Enid,” Win Thursday cut in. “This is Morse. And his friend, Bixby.”

“Good evening” Bixby said. “Well. It looks like we all had the same idea. But then, great minds think alike, I suppose,” he added, and then he gave a gallant little nod towards the two of them.

Enid could see at once what he meant, as each of the three of them were dressed in an identical color scheme: Bixby in a crisp white shirt with a silk red tie, Win Thursday in a red party dress under her white half-apron, and she in a white blouse with a trace of red embroidery about the collar and a matching red pencil skirt.

She had hesitated when she had bought the outfit, feeling it was perhaps a bit young for her, but it had looked so festive and cheery in the little shop window that she found she simply couldn’t resist.

“Ah, well,” Enid demurred, feeling slightly flustered under the young man’s beaming gaze, “Wasn’t sure if it wasn’t too much, really, but, as it’s Christmas, I …”

“Nonsense,” he said. “It brings out the winter apples in your cheeks, your natural color. You couldn’t be lovelier.”

There was something in the gleam of the young man’s dark eyes, in his winning smile that sent she and Win Thursday laughing merrily…

And then they drew up short at once, as if they had both come to the same realization.

What were they doing, giggling like schoolgirls before a man young enough to be their son?

Not that it was their fault, really. He was a charming little devil—and the sort who knew it, to boot.

“What’s this then?” she asked, with a glance towards the dessert dish that Win Thursday was setting on the counter.

“Ah….” Bixby said. “It’s a pie.”

“Bixby made it himself,” Morse said, which wasn’t altogether kind, as it was clear at once from the falter in his friend’s smooth expression that the man was uncertain of it.

Enid regarded it for a moment, determined to say something encouraging to make up for the gaffe. 

Well.

He had tried, the dear heart.

“Oh, my,” she said. “Pecans and miniature marshmallows. What a … novel touch.”

“Yes. Well. Yes. It’s an old family recipe. Albanian, actually.”

“Oooo,” she crooned, appreciatively. “I don’t know anything about Albanian desserts. It will be the first one I try.”

“Ah. Well,” Bix said, shifting his weight a bit under the praise.

“Morse,” Win Thursday said, “won’t you carry some of these plates into the dining room? And Bixby, dear, do you think you might help us cut through this pineapple? It’s been giving me fits.”

And quite right, she was. 

Sensible woman, Win Thursday.

That was always the way with awkward young men in the kitchen.

Give them a job to do, some direction.

“Of course,” Bixby said.

“All right, Mrs. Thursday,” Morse said.

Morse scooped up two platters and carried them off into the dining room, while Bixby rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and joined them at the work counter. He sliced through the top of the pineapple with a deft and surprising grace … while Enid turned away, continuing her task of popping cocktail toothpicks into chunks of cheese.

“So. Do you know Morse from college?” she asked, trying to make small talk, to put the posh young man at ease. “Jimmy tells me he was at Oxford.” 

“Oh. No.” Bixby said. “I mean. Yes. Yes, I do actually.”

Enid cleared her throat, ignoring the hesitation, the obvious dissemblance.

Poor things.

It was clear they had never bothered to get their story straight.

Would it be kinder to let them know in some way, that it was as clear as a bell, so that they could stop worrying about it? Or would it be better to pretend she didn’t see it, so as not to shatter their illusions? They most likely thought such matters would go right over the head of a middle-aged matronly woman such as herself, she supposed. 

Funny her Jimmy never should have mentioned it.

But then, perhaps he hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he really thought they were simply old college friends. He was such a straightforward soul, her Jimmy.

Ah, well.

Life was for the young. They’d figure it out.

After all, even she, at her age, could be just as foolish as anyone of one and twenty, just as full of all the fond hopes of the season.

Jimmy had been so busy with work of late—ever since he’d been appointed to that Forward Planning Steering Committee—that it seemed as if it had been an age since he had mentioned even taking a girl to the cinema.

She had hoped someone at the party might bring along a daughter or a sister or a visiting niece who might catch his eye, but it was looking more and more like that wasn’t to be.

But then again, the evening was still young yet. And it was, after all, that most magical time of the year.

******

Jakes might have said that it felt almost like a holy moment.

If he believed in such things.

Peter Jakes had walked up to the little white door a hundred times in another life, and now, standing on the threshold in the evening chill, he remembered all of them, all of those long-ago quietly dawning mornings, all of those fleeting and strange and almost alien moments of domesticity that he had borne witness to whenever he had come to pick up the old man.

The homemade sandwiches. The sweet and unconscious straightening of a jacket lapel. The swift peck on a roughened cheek.

_“You’ll do, Fred. Come home safe.”_

And now, after all of this time, here he found himself again, against all odds, on this very spot—not as a careworn DS coming ‘round for his guv’nor, but as a guest at a Christmas party, ringing the bell with its sprightly call, standing alongside of his own wife and daughter.

He and Hope waited on the top step, their child bundled in Hope’s arms, as small flakes of snow drifted about them, and, in a few moments, the door was opened—not by the old man or by Mrs. Thursday, as Jakes had been expecting, but, prophetically enough, by Morse himself—the one person he had been the most keen to see, the one the memory of whom still niggled at him at odd moments even from thousands of miles away, even as he leaned on a split-timber fence, or pitched hay, or was just walking quietly along, with the all the weight of unfinished business.

Morse smiled, and Jakes could see at once that he felt the same.

He looked good, actually, Morse. Better than he had during those days at Lake Silence, anyway—his face a bit shaper perhaps, his jaw and stubborn chin a bit more squared—but he was the same old Morse, all in all.

The only odd thing about him, in fact, was just how delighted he looked, as if he were already playing the wiseacre and …

Oh.

How appropriate.

“Morse,” Jakes said, curtly, taking in Morse’s shirt. “Well. Just look at you. Are you all ready, then?”

“Ready for what?” he asked.

“Ready to help me muck out the stables. You look like you’re up to your nose in it, anyway.”

Morse snorted and pushed the door open further.

So.

The old game was on, then.

And the score was one to one.

“Morse,” he said. “This is Hope.”

“Hello,” Hope said, offering him her free hand, even as she tried to tamper down her smile.

She had heard enough Morse stories over the years that doubtless she couldn’t help but find it amusing that he would live up to her expectations within the span of ten seconds.

She gave Morse’s hand a shake and then heaved their daughter, who was now struggling to get down, a bit higher up on her hip.

“And this is Connie,” she said.

Morse went still at that for a moment, with that old look he had of a deer caught in the headlights, and Jakes scowled.

He knew that Morse hated his own name, that he only went by that damn letter _E._ And while Constance was a virtue name, of sorts, he supposed, there was nothing wrong with it, not in the least.

It certainly was a far cry from being saddled with a name like Endeavour.

But then, in a flash, the look was gone, as Morse seemed to recover himself.

“Come in,” he said. “Everyone’s been waiting to see you.”

*** 

As soon as Jakes stepped into the cozy little living room filled with the scent of evergreen, that passing moment of awkwardness dissipated like a cloud, and he felt the rightness of it, in coming back to Oxford. It was just as if he had never left, as if he had left some part of him here among them, all along. Jim Strange was just the same as ever, as was Dr. DeBryn, watching the scene with open amusement, a glass of Scotch in hand. He felt a wave of affection for all of them, even for Mrs. Bright and Joss Bixby, whom he had never properly met. 

He smiled as introductions were made all around, glad that Thursday had warned him what to expect, so that he didn’t betray any alarm at Mrs. Bright’s frail appearance ... or, for that matter, at the appearance at all of Joss Bixby, who had been the source of more than one noise complaint—as well as the suspect a hit-and-run—during his last year on the job.

So, Bixby had meant it, then, that dramatic little gesture of showmanship he had staged in the interrogation room.

Still hanging on to sour old Morse, then.

God only knew why.

Standing beside him, Hope made a quick scan of the room for breakables and hazards and then deemed it safe to set Connie down. Once their daughter’s struggling legs hit the ground, she took off at once to explore the place, which had been turned by glitter and garland and gaudy fairy lights into its own sort of Winter Wonderland.

Instead of toddling about, however, she made a beeline right to where the Brights were sitting, side by side, on the sofa and, inwardly, Jakes cringed.

He had become so accustomed to Hope’s large family, to the sprawling complex of the ranch—where kids and dogs and bad-tempered orange barn cats roamed the place at will— that he had forgotten that some people might not be all that crazy about kids.

But when Connie stretched out her arm, offering Mrs. Bright her stuffed dog—the one she usually wouldn’t part with for anything—Mrs. Bright was smiling, just as if Connie were her very own granddaughter who she had been waiting to see from across the Pond.

“Dog,” Connie said solemnly.

“Why, thank you, lovely,” Mrs. Bright said.

Connie nodded once and then headed off to say hello to Jim.

It was a simple enough exchange, so Jakes was taken aback when Mrs. Bright’s eyes welled up with tears, right as Connie turned away.

“We had a daughter,” Mr. Bright said, heavily. “Sweet little thing.”

Jakes went still at that. He had no idea. Had never had any idea.

The image of Mr. Bright as a father—something he had never considered before, but that seemed to cast the man in an altogether different light— had barely materialized in his mind, in fact, before Jakes registered his use of the past tense.

“The tropics,” Mr. Bright said simply, answering the question that hung like a pressing silence in the air.

And then, suddenly, Jakes realized that he shouldn’t be all that surprised. It was just as he had always known, wasn’t it? Even those as seemingly unassailable as Mr. Bright weren’t immune from it.

Unconsciously, he strung his arm through Hope’s, as if reassuring himself of her warm and and steady presence at his side. 

Even DeBryn, who dealt with death every day, looked somber, quietly empathetic.

Mr. Bright cast about then, clearly keen to change the subject, as if he felt he had revealed too much of himself. 

“So. Morse,” he said, his voice at once growing stronger, turning away from that thin strain of sorrow back to the familiar, reedy, posh timber he had always struck up back at the nick. “This is a friend of yours from when you were up, is it?”

And then, almost in lock-step with one another, Morse and Bixby each stuck their foot in it.

“Yes,” Bixby said.

“No,” Morse said. “We met at a party.”

Morse turned and widened his eyes at Bixby, as if to ask what he was on about.

Christ, but he could be obtuse sometimes. 

At a party? Really?

He might as well have said they met under the mistletoe.

“You were neighbors, weren’t you?” Jakes asked.

“Huh?” Morse said.

“You were neighbors.”

Morse seemed to mull that over for a moment, his mouth turned down in a thoughtful frown.

Silently, Jakes willed Morse just to say “yes” and be done with it. It was perfect card he was handing him, really. True enough for Morse to say without stumbling, and simple enough to spare everyone’s blushes.

“Oh,” Morse said. “Yes.”

“Who wants eggnog?” Thursday asked.

Jakes smirked. He and the old man were on the same page, then, just as always. Might be best just to get everybody plastered.

Jakes scooped up Connie with a swooping motion that set her laughing, and settled back into a chair, preparing to enjoy himself. He never would have thought it would be so when he had first gotten onto that plane, heading off to the States, off into a whole new life, but….

But god, he had missed this place.

God, he had missed them.

It was true, what he had said, all of those years ago.

Absence makes.

****

He wasn’t planning to speak to Morse about it, unless it came up, and he certainly wasn’t planning to seek him out. Jakes had learned long ago that things between them unfolded all the more smoothly when not forced.

But then, it happened that he stumbled upon him in a quiet corner of the dining room—not that Morse was getting something to eat, of course, but rather, it was as if he had gone in there for a moment of quiet.

Jakes paused in the doorway, uncertain about intruding on his sanctuary, but then, Morse lifted his head and smiled.

“So,” he said. “You’re a father now.” 

A statement that felt like an invitation, like two years’ worth of questions packed into a handful of words.

“Yeah,” Jakes said. “It’s great, actually. At first… well… you sort of panic. You can’t help but think of it, of all the next twenty years, all at once.”

Morse snorted, appreciatively, as if he could well believe it. 

“But then, you know. You get to know them, just like you’d get to know anyone else. Except you already love them.”

“Hmmmm,” Morse hummed. 

For a moment, Morse was quiet, a trace of hesitation in his face.

“Connie,” he said, at last. 

“Short for Constance,” Jakes explained. 

“Sort of … like Hope, I suppose. A family name.” 

“No,” Jakes said. “Actually, I was the one who suggested it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Jakes said. “Actually … I was thinking of you.”

“Me?” Morse asked, clearly startled. “How have I been constant?”

His face flushed slightly pink, then, and he looked down into his glass, murmuring into it, softly under his breath.

“More erratic, I would have thought,” he said. 

For a moment, Jakes said nothing, even though he might have said a hundred things.

That it was because he had often wished, ever since that night, that he had had a fraction of Morse’s hidden reserves of strength, of his perseverance, of his dedication to what he believed in.

Because there was a part of him, beyond the quips and smirks, that stood in awe of the unwavering way in which Morse stuck to his principles, even when the world around him was not all that it should have been.

Because Morse had been, in his own daft and annoying way, the best, the truest friend of his adult life. Because when Jakes had crumpled under the weight of it all, putting his hands up over his head as if to block it all out, Morse had stood up from the table. Because he had been the first to stand up for him since Big Pete had disappeared years and years ago…

Because, through it all, Morse had always had his back, really. And he always would.

Because he had been the one reliable thing, the one constant in his life, before he had found Hope. 

But he shouldn’t have to spell it out. Hadn’t he said it, already, in telling him of the name?

Why did Morse have to always make everything so bloody awkward?

“Why do you think, Morse?” Jakes asked, shortly. “Because of all the years that I’ve known you, you’ve been a constant pain in the arse.”

Morse quirked a hint of a smile and scrubbed up the hair at the back of his head.

“Seriously, Morse,” Jakes added. “Who writes a letter after two and a half years, takes the time to post it via airmail, and then doesn’t give anyone any news?”

“It was my mother’s name,” Morse said.

As was so typical with him, Morse’s words seemed to jump off of the track of the conversation, so that it took Jakes a minute to register their meaning.

“Oh,” he said. “God. Sorry.”

Morse smiled, wanly.

“It’s all right. You wouldn’t have known.”

And of course, he wouldn’t have.

But maybe, if things had been arranged differently, if they had been arranged in the way they ought to have been, he would have.

He should have. 

But it was all right.

They were all right.

Even lost boys, it seemed, manage, in the end, to wend their way home.

“I don’t know what to say,” Morse said, at last.

“A Christmas miracle, then.”

If Morse didn’t know what to say, you would think he might just, for once in his life, accept a compliment and be done with it, but, instead, he scrubbed up his hair again, looking thoughtful, always a bad sign that more was to come.

“Oh. I dunno,” Morse said, softly. “You’re the one who’s the rock. Aren’t you?”

Jakes huffed a laugh.

This was more like it, more like old times.

“Thanks, Morse.”

“No,” he said. “I mean your name. Peter. It means rock. From the Greek. _Petros.”_

“Really?” Jakes asked.

“Hmmmmm.”

“I never knew that.”

Who would have thought that his name—one heard shouted commonly enough through the halls of that succession of dim and musty dwellings he had grown up in, each smelling of piss and bleach—might contain within it some grandiose, ancient Greek origins?

Though, he hadn’t ever felt as if he were anyone’s rock, really.

Just then, Hope came into the room, Connie riding along once more happily on her hip, and it was perfect, her timing was perfect, it was as if she had read his mind, he was that happy to see her.

He would have felt like a bastard if he didn’t tell Morse, at least once, all that he had meant to him.

But there was no need to go on and on about it.

Hope picked up a fork with one hand and set in on a plate, and in that simple act, he felt a surge of love for her. He couldn’t get over how adaptable she was, how deftly she did things now with one hand as she toted Connie about, opening doors wide and allowing them to swing behind her, pouring out a cup of coffee as surely as rain falls from the spout.

He paused to watch her as she scanned the desserts on the table, leaning Connie slightly forward so that she could help her in making their joint decision.

“Is this… pumpkin?” she asked, tentatively, pausing before an orange custard pie. “I wouldn’t think that would be the thing, here.”

“No,” Morse said. “It’s sweet potato. It’s the traditional Christmas dish of Albania.”

 _“Albania?”_ Hope blurted. “Are you sure you don’t mean Alabama?”

Jakes cringed a little. As much as she was a breath of fresh, snow-capped mountain air, there were times she could be a little too loud, a little too blunt. 

But Morse was smiling, a bit devilishly, really, as if he thought he was getting away with something, as if he found her pronouncement funny as hell.

Inscrutable buggar.

Hope cut herself a piece of the pie and set it on the plate. Then, she set about trying a forkful, while Connie, sitting on her forearm, watched the proceedings with interest.

“So,” Morse asked. “How is it?”

“Mmmmm,” Hope said. “It’s really good. You should try some.”

Morse made an uncertain face at that, looking at the pie as if it held unseen dangers beneath its smooth surface. And little wonder, really. It looked about as sweet and as dense as an actual tin of condensed milk, not at all something that would suit Morse’s palate.

In all of the years that Jakes had known him, he had only very rarely ever seen Morse actually eat _anything,_ really. It was as if the man lived off of beer and Scotch and whatever weird energy he had held wired within his own head.

“Go on, then,” Jakes urged. “Albania, huh? Sounds awfully highbrow. Ought to be just your thing.”

“Well... I ... ,” Morse began, searching, no doubt, for some excuse.

Well nothing. Well he’d backed himself into a corner, this time. It was the perfect payback for that shirt. 

“Go on,” Jakes urged. “Not the kind of thing you’ll find at the bakery on the corner now, is it? Wouldn’t want to miss your chance.” 

Reluctantly, with an air as if he were being drug off to face a madman in the Bodleian, Morse helped himself to a piece of the pie, just as Bixby was coming into the living room.

“Ah,” Bixby said, his eyes lighting at once on Morse. “Did you try it, Endeavour?”

Jakes blinked at that: It was a shock, hearing Morse called by a name that he had never once heard spoken aloud, that he had only ever seen in the typed print of his file. 

The only shock that was greater was Bixby’s bright and apparent interest in Morse’s opinion, the hopeful look in his eyes, as if you might find only Morse and nothing else in the room reflected there.

Christ.

Had Bixby baked the pie himself or something? 

With some apparent difficulty, Morse swallowed. 

“Hmmmm,” he hummed. It was the same noncommittal little sound Morse was once wont to make when Strange had come out with the obvious, the one that could cut any number of ways.

“Daddy!” rang out Connie then, with a cry of a cheer. 

Before Jakes knew what was happening, Connie had lurched towards him out of Hope’s arms, utterly fearless, as if there was never any doubt he would catch her.

Just as if he were something that solid, something she knew would not falter.

And it was all perfect, the way she reached out for him, just at that moment, with that boundless boldness. As he gathered her up, heaving her up against his side even as she planted her small palm on his shoulder, he felt that maybe what Morse had said just might be true.

Maybe, just maybe .... they could _learn_ to grow into their names. Just as they grew into everything else.

He cast a glance at Morse, then, who was struggling valiantly though his slice of pie.

It _must_ be possible.

Because Morse, it seemed, was certainly learning to endeavour.

****

It was like being on a ride at the fun fair, one that looped and dipped and dived …

One that he couldn’t get off.

All during the party, Jim Strange felt as if he never knew just what turn the evening might take; it was somewhere in the first hour that he realized that he was in a house full of people all speaking over one another and under one another, in a house full of people speaking as if in code, and that he was the only one operating with the full key.

No surprise there, though.

He was good old Jim Strange, wasn’t he? Steady, easygoing, easy to confide in.

Maybe a little _too_ easy to confide in, really.

Made him feel a bit Machiavellian, to be honest.

And then, he took another sip of his drink.

It didn’t set altogether right, when he thought about it, just how many things he had found himself privy to.

Of the truth of that cheque, and of just how deep the old man had really gotten himself into it. Of the truth of Morse and Bixby. Of how the doctors hadn’t given Mrs. Bright much hope, and of how next week the Brights were leaving for a round of experimental treatments in the States.

He even knew the secret meaning behind those canaries, fluttering happily in their cage behind his chair. And of how, despite the similarity of Hope’s name to Connie’s, it wasn’t Hope who had suggested the name.

But, as they say, music is the universal language, and once Bixby took a seat at Mrs. Thursday’s new piano, and he got out his trombone, all of that seemed to melt away.

Of course, they all had their secrets, their own hopes and fears which they would carry with them on into the new year.

And yet, as those first few notes sounded in the homey little room, they all felt it, that sweet and warm affection that ran deeper than their differences.

Which were many, mind, Jim could say that.

They had travelled down a long and winding road together, one that ultimately had led all the way out to Wicklesham Quarry.

They had reached the point that, even if they wearied of one another, even if they had their fallings out, well...

It was too late now, wasn’t it?

They had all been a part of the fabric of one another’s lives for so long now that there would never be anyone else who could know the real truth of them, in spite of all the half-truths they might cast up around themselves like smoke, in the way that the others in this room did.

Each note that sounded in the room rang out with such an air of contagious joviality, that, to the outside observer, it might have seemed as if they all of them three sheets to the wind.

But no one was drunk, really. Not with drink, anyway.

If they _were_ drunk, it was with the knowledge, that despite all the odds, they were all still standing, filled with a gratitude that was its own form of giddiness.

Well.

It might have been that Morse was a little plastered.

Sitting alongside of Bixby on the piano bench, but turned the other way round, his legs stretched out before him, Morse was singing as if to rival those ruddy canaries.

Jim had always known, ever since that story long ago in the Oxford Mail, that Morse sung with some Oxford choral group, TOSCA or what have you, but, whenever Morse had mentioned it, Strange had always envisioned him standing quietly in a cathedral, singing some chilled and plummy chorus of Handel’s Messiah.

He never thought Morse might be capable of pulling out a rendition of “Sleigh Ride,” just as smooth as Johnny Mathis, albeit at a slightly lower, rounded timber, let alone that he might even take the number even more over-the-top, putting even more _oomph_ into the words of the song.

And, from the very first verse, Jim realized why.

“ _Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling,_ _Yeeeeeee-haw_ ,” Morse cried out.

Jakes smirked and shook his head.

_“Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you. Giddy-yap giddy-yap, giddy-yap, let’s go… let’s look at the snow...”_

Morse made galloping noises on the tops of his thighs, then, adding a bit of percussion in time to the music, to Connie’s everlasting delight. The little girl spun around, dancing circles in the center of the carpet, as her parents and the Brights clapped along.

For his part, Jim put all of his heart into the slide of the trombone… even as his heart went out to all of them. Out to all of these complicated souls who had come into his life...

All of whom were a hell of a lot simpler, really, than they thought they were, than they liked to believe. 

By the time they got ‘round to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” it was clear Morse had had one too many. He led them on a merry chase through the maze of the song, caught every time at “four calling birds,” sticking with it, in his own stubborn way, drowning them out with his clearer, stronger voice, even as the others had moved on without him.

_“Four calling birds, four calling birds.”_

“Three French hens, Morse,” DeBryn prompted.

 _“Four calling birds,_ ” Morse rang out.

It was all Jim could do to keep on playing, to not break off laughing.

Even when properly soused, Morse always popped out with the truth of it.

That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? The lights and the tinsel and the song? Even here, in the bleakest days of the year, there they remained, calling out, with all that they held in their hearts. With all of those bright things that the darkness couldn’t take away from them.

***

The first thing Jim registered was a heavy pressure on the side of his face.

Then, he opened his eyes.

The room was white with the clear light of morning, and his head was resting heavily on the hard arm of the Thursdays’ roughly upholstered couch.

He sat up and rubbed hard at his stubbled cheek, trying to make sense of his surroundings, piecing the evening together as he would a case.

After the Brights had left for home, and little Connie had fallen asleep, leaving the Jakes family to say their goodbyes and head back to the house where they had been staying, that of a friend of Hope’s from when she was up, the party had descended into a sort of haze, as warm as the glow of the pink and blue and green Christmas lights, which were still blinking on and on, rather redundantly now, in the sun-bright living room.

When Jim tried to recall the events of the evening, the only thing that truly seemed to stick in his mind was Morse, leading them through a drunken rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” of him getting caught on that one line over and over.

_Four calling birds… four calling birds….four calling birds...._

About how it had seemed a proclamation of sorts, a credo fitted for the winter’s falling light.

Eh, well.

It had made sense when he was plastered, anyway.

Slowly, Jim sat up, and looked around the room. The place was a tip, really. Strands of garland fallen awry, tables littered with glasses and plates bearing the remnants of the party—a piece of pastry crust, a row of tinsel-topped cocktail toothpicks, a single, forlorn olive.

The guests, too, looked similarly the worse for wear.

His mother was folded into an armchair by the window, her head tipped to the side and her glass in hand, but otherwise looking no different than if she might have nodded off over a book at home. Dr. DeBryn, likewise, looked respectable enough, in his chair, but, in a third chair across the room, Mrs. Thursday was sitting sound asleep in Mr. Thursday’s lap, one arm hanging over his shoulder—Jim grimaced at first, but then decided it was sort of sweet, really, considering how many years they had been together, to see the old man as he might have once carried his bride over the threshold.

Jim turned, then, to where Morse and Bixby were sprawled out on the opposite end of the sofa beside him. Bixby’s long legs were stretched out before him, his head tipped back against the high back of the couch, while Morse was spilling over, his head lulling heavily on Bixby’s chest.

Wouldn’t have been too bad, really, if Morse didn’t have his hand half-jammed between the buttons of Bixby’s shirt, as if he had been trying to warm the ends of his fingers.

If his mother or Mrs. Thursday were to wake first, they would doubtless be perplexed by such a sight.

Slowly, Jim rose from the couch and then went over to take Morse by his bony shoulders.

“Morse,” he said, shifting his weight so that he was slightly more upright.

“Hmmmmm,” Morse hummed, irritably.

“Let’s just try to tidy this up a bit, alright?”

“Hmmmmm,” Morse said.

Morse went along, then, allowing himself to be guided but not deigning to open his eyes, scowling softly when the light from the window hit him more fully in the face.

“M’head hurts,” he grumbled.

Jim huffed a laugh.

“Yeah? I don’t doubt it, matey.”

Jim stepped back, appraising his work. Now Morse’s head was tipped onto Bixby’s shoulder, so that they looked like nothing more than any two blokes drunk after a night at the pub.

He turned in a slow circle, taking in the disorder of the room. Then he went into the kitchen, found an apron, and went to work.

He was only about ten minutes into the job, when the doorbell rang, the cheery bell sounding through the still house as if to emphasize the utter clock-tick silence of the place. Neither the master nor the mistress of the house seemed fit to rouse themselves to answer, so Jim padded dutifully to the door.

On the threshold, he found Joan Thursday in a pansy-blue coat, her hair falling softly about her shoulders, a suitcase in her hand. She blinked in surprise when she saw him.

“Hello, you,” she smiled.

“Hello, Joannie.”

“Bit early for you. What are you doing here?” she asked, wonderingly, as she stepped inside. Jim had barely the time to formulate and answer when Joannie went still, taking in the strewn garland, the glasses on the hall table, the leftover chaos of the party.

“I don’t think they were expecting you,” Jim said.

“I … I wanted it to be surprise. I didn’t want them to be… ,” and here, her voice fell, uncertain. 

“... alone on Christmas.”

She set her suitcase down and went into the living room, Jim following along in her wake. Almost as soon as she stepped into the room, she drew up to a halt.

“Are my parents…..?” Joannie began.

Then, she turned round to look at him.

“Are my parents… _drunk?”_

“Yeah,” Jim said. “I mean. No. I mean… I think they’re hungover.”

Joannie smiled and then huffed a laugh of disbelief. 

Funny how he had forgotten just how pretty she was, just how the mischief could shine in her dark blue eyes. He broke into a smile, too, and then she was laughing, looking up into his face as if a sweet conspiracy had blossomed up between them.

And why, at this moment, a moment that felt almost like magic, should he be wearing a ruddy apron?

But Joannie’s laugh was ringing like a bell, the dimples soft in her face, and then she reached out, straightening the bib of the apron where it fit him a tad too snugly over his chest.

“Well, Jim. Good of you to look after them for me,” she said, crisply. “Always knew I could rely on you.”

And she was smiling up into his eyes, and he knew he should say something, but the only thing that sprung up into his mind was some daft thing Morse had said, weeks ago, down at the pub, when they had both put away a few ...

That there was no real magic. Only love. That the all of the rest was just smoke and mirrors. 


End file.
